The Dow is below 6,500, headed to 3,600 (my then-joke prediction when discussing the book Dow 36,000) and maybe 1,400 (if the 1930s is our model). You don’t own any common stocks, do you? (Thanks to Bobby)
It amazes me how anti-stock market so many Austrians (and libertarians) seem to think the stock market is some sort of scam. Somehow owning a business is good, but once you are part owner and there is a liquid market to unload your share things all change. It becomes a scam, everything is overvalued, you should buy gold and nothing else. I am not sure when this happened. Rothbard seemed to cheer stock markets, and identified them as symbols of economic freedom in Making Economic Sense:
One time I asked Professor von Mises, the great expert on the economics of socialism, at what point on this spectrum of statism would he designate a country as "socialist" or not. At that time, I wasn't sure that any definite criterion existed to make that sort of clear-cut judgment.
And so I was pleasantly surprised at the clarity and decisiveness of Mises's answer. "A stock market," he answered promptly. "A stock market is crucial to the existence of capitalism and private property. For it means that there is a functioning market in the exchange of private titles to the means of production. There can be no genuine private ownership of capital without a stock market: there can be no true socialism if such a market is allowed to exist."
And so it is particularly thrilling to see that in the headlong flight from central planning and socialism, several of the Communist countries are actually introducing, or preparing to introduce, a stock market. A prospect that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago! The process is already in its early stages in Communist China. And the Soviet Union is beginning to talk about introducing a stock market.
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