It may not take 9,080 days, but…

The U.S. stock market didn’t hit the peak it achieved in 1929 again until 1954 (9,080 days from September 3, 1929 to November 23, 1954). The recovery didn’t really begin until the build up for the Second World War began in 1939. But what’s most instructive about this is less which government policies worked or ...

588866_090203_stockmarket_2.32.jpg
588866_090203_stockmarket_2.32.jpg
TO GO WITH AFP STORY : " The Great Crash of 1929, and lessons taming the crisis of 2008 ". (FILES) - This photo dated 1929, shows a view of people rushing to a saving bank in Millbury, Massachusetts, October 24th as Wall Street in New-york crashed sparking a run on banks that spread accross the country. October 1929 was the beginning of the 1929 Stock Market Crash. The financial firestorm that has spread around the world from the US home loan market in the last 14 months is now in 2008 widely described as the biggest crisis since the crash of 1929, but with some big differences. Probably a "once-in-a-century type of event," in the words of former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, "outstripping anything I've seen." For Macquarie Private Wealth associate director Marcus Droga, the collapse of Lehman brothers and other Wall Street distress dignals on Monday probably marked "more in one day of financial history than we've seen since the great crash of 1929." AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read OFF/AFP/Getty Images)

The U.S. stock market didn’t hit the peak it achieved in 1929 again until 1954 (9,080 days from September 3, 1929 to November 23, 1954). The recovery didn’t really begin until the build up for the Second World War began in 1939. But what’s most instructive about this is less which government policies worked or did not, but that the economy we had at the far end was utterly transformed.

Think of it: by 1952 the United States had become a superpower, the world had been divided into east and west, and the economy had seen the advent of the nuclear age, the beginning of the computer era, the emergence of the multinational corporation, the first stirrings of the service economy. The United States of 1952 did not look very much like 1929 Washington. Now, we’re not expecting a 23-year recovery cycle here, but we should consider how the U.S. economy and the world are likely to be different in say five to seven years which is probably the earliest we might expect returning to all the pre-crisis levels.

It’s going to be very different and we ought to be leading the receiver (to use a football term) on this one, spending for what we will become rather than struggling to preserve what we will never be again.

OFF/AFP/Getty Images

David Rothkopf is visiting professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His latest book is The Great Questions of Tomorrow. He has been a longtime contributor to Foreign Policy and was CEO and editor of the FP Group from 2012 to May 2017. Twitter: @djrothkopf

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