Wall Street Timeline
Before The Great Depression • The New Deal & FDR • The Post War Boom
Reaganomics • Dubya's Great Recession
• Fixing The Disaster
• Emperor Trump
Before The Great Depression
The New Deal & FDR
I'll hafta find some . . .
The Post War Boom
- 1972 Nov 14: The Dow Jones Industrial Average index closed above 1000 for the first time ever.
- 1974 Dec 9: The Dow Jones Industrial Average index dropped to a low of 577.60, a loss of 42 percent since November 1972.
Reaganomics
National Debt in 1980: ONE TRILLION DOLLARS
which included the entire VietNam War
- 1981 Aug 13: Kemp-Roth Tax Cut signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.
- 1982 July: Collapse of the Penn Square Bank in Oklahoma City, the first of 139 Oklahoma banks that failed at the end of the Oil Boom Bubble of the 1980s.
- 1982 Oct 1: Congress passed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act, which deregulated the savings & loan industry (cause of the Savings & Loan Crisis of the 1980s & 1990s); signed into law by President Reagan on 15 October.
- 1982 Oct 12: The Dow Jones Industrial Average index closed above 1000 again, the first time since the low of 577 in December 1974 (94 months).
- 1986 Oct 23: Tax Reform Act of 1986 signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.
- 1986 Nov: Wall Street arbitrageur Ivan Boesky pled guilty to securities fraud; he also revealed details of insider trading deals with financier Michael Milken and others, which led to an S.E.C. probe of Wall Street investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert. Boesky served two years at Lompoc Federal Prison; Milken served 22 months at Pleasanton, California; both were banned for life from working in the securities industry.
- 1987 Jan 8: The Dow Jones Industrial Average index closed above 2000 for the first time.
- Mid-1987: Beginning of the Reagan-Bush Savings & Loan Crisis; 747 U.S. S&L/thrift banks failed. The total cost is estimated at $160 billion {$230 billion in 2010 dollars} including Bush 41's direct bailout of $125 billion {$180 billion in 2010 dollars}, paid for by taxpayers.
- 1987 June 2: President Reagan announced his nomination of Alan Greenspan to succeed Paul A.
Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve; Greenspan served for 18 years.
- 1987 Oct 19: 'Black Monday', then #1, now #2 worst one-day Dow-Jones Industrial Average decline of 22.6%, a loss of 508 points to $1,738.74 – almost twice as bad as the worst day of 1929 – and equal to a one-day loss of nearly 5,000 points today. From the start of trading on October 14 to the close of trading on October 19, the D.J.I.A. lost 760 points, a loss of over 31 percent. The S&P 500 fell 20.4%, falling from $282.7 to $225.06; the NASDAQ Composite lost only 11.3% because the NASDAQ market system froze.
National Debt in 1992: FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS
quadrupled during the Reagan-Bush Years
- Bill Clinton's First Term, 1993-96: Increase of the National Debt was slowed to 25 percent, reaching five trillion dollars.
- 1997 Nov 24: The 'End Game' memo from Larry Summers to his boss Timothy Geithner confirming the Wall Street plan to deregulate banks and allow speculation in real estate derivatives (memo revealed to public by journalist Greg Palast in August 2013).
- 1998 April 3: The Dow Jones Industrial Average index's first close above 9,000.
- 1998 Sept 23: All other options gone, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York bailed out the collapsed hedge fund Long Term Capital Management [est. 1993] to the sum of $3.625 billion, and Wall Street absorbed 90 percent of L.T.C.M.'s resources.
- 1999 Nov 12: Sen. Phill Gramm [GOP-TX] successfully gutted the Glass-Steagall Banking Acts of 1933 with passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a major cause of the subprime mortgage meltdown of 2008.
- 2000 Dec 14: Sen. Phil Gramm [GOP-TX] pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, deregulating all derivatives trading (a major cause of both the Enron Scandal in 2001 and the G.O.P. Economic Meltdown of 2008); signed into law by President Clinton on December 21. This also deregulated petroleum futures traders, the cause of rising gas prices ever since.
- Clinton's Second Term: Increase of National Debt slowed still further; Clinton balanced the budget and created a Treasury surplus.
Dubya's Great Recession
Official National Debt in 2001: 5.728 TRILLION DOLLARS
on the Monday after George Dubya Bush was sworn into office
- 2001 Jan 20: Usurper Republican George W. Bush sworn into office as the 43rd President of the United States.
- 2001 April: Working Minds Philosophy Essay #9 "Reason-Based Taxation"
- 2001 September 11: Attack by Muslim terrorist suicide teams on the World Trade Center in New York City and on the Pentagon Building in Washington, DC.
{See selected newspaper front pages of September 12.}
- 2001 Dec: Working Minds Philosophy Essay #18 "The Stock Market Casino"
- 2002 March: The NASDAQ Composite index bottomed in the 1900s, a drop of 62% since March 2000.
- 2002 July 1: The NASDAQ Composite index closed at 5-year low of 1,403.80; DOW down to 9,109.79.
- 2002 Oct 9: The Dow Jones Industrial Average index bottomed at 7,286.27 (down 2.9% for a 5-year low).
- 2003 June 3: Mysterious federal ceremony claiming Republican victory in ending regulation of U.S. banks.
- 2004 Feb: Working Minds Philosophy Essay #40 "Paleo-Capitalism"
- 2004 April: Hearing at the S.E.C. that gave the five top Wall Street investment banks permission to release capital reserves to invest in 'exotic instruments'.
- 2005 Sept: Working Minds Philosophy Essay #54 "F*** The Fed"
The post-Katrina WMail ezine Issue #54 of September 2005 included the following prediction:
“Dubya can’t win in Iraq, and he failed totally in Louisiana, and the same blindness that caused the thousands of deaths in New Orleans will also trigger the collapse of the world economy.”
- 2006 Feb 1: Ben S. Bernanke sworn in as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, succeeding longtime Fed Chair Alan Greenspan.
- 2006 June: Henry Paulson sworn in as Secretary of Treasury, kept by Obama thru 2010.
- 2006 Sept: Nouriel Roubini of N.Y.U. warned at the I.M.F. meeting that the U.S. faced a severe housing crash, soaring oil prices, declining consumer prices, and defaults on mortgages worth trillions of dollars.
- 2006 Oct 19: The Dow Jones Industrial Average index closed above 12,000 for the first time, at $12,029.50.
- 2007 April 2: New Century Financial Corp. of Orange County, California -- second largest sub-prime lender in the U.S. -- filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
- 2008 March 14 (Friday): The Fed announced a 28-day 'backstop' loan agreement with JPMorgan Chase to prop up the liquidity of Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns; the Fed announced later that evening that the loan guarantee would not be available on Monday, triggering a panic among investors.
- 2008 March 16: JPMorgan Chase agreed to buy Bear Stearns at $2/share, but foisted $29B of sub-prime paper onto the Fed.
- 2008 March 17 (Monday): The stock price of Bear Stearns plunged to $30 per share; JPMorgan Chase eventually paid roughly $10 per share for Bear Stearns (minus the toxic paper foisted on the Fed).
- 2008 July: Working Minds Philosophy Essay #78 "The Robber Barons"
- 2008 July: All-time high average U.S. gasoline pump price of $4.11 per gallon.
- 2008 Sept 7 (Sunday): Henry Paulson agreed to a government takeover (i.e. bailout) of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac; actual cash outlay was eventually $34.2B to Fannie Mae and $51.7B to Freddie Mac – while $5.4 trillion in outstanding and very risky mortgage debt remain on the books.
- 2008 Sept 9: Lehman Brothers stock plunged 45 percent.
- 2008 Sept 14: Under pressure to complete negotiations started in November 2007, Bank of America bought Wall Street investment bank Merrill Lynch for $50 billion worth of BofA stock, or about $29 per share (a 38 percent premium over book value, but a 61 percent discount to the September 2007 market price).
- 2008 Sept 15 (Monday): Giant stock broker/mortgage lender Lehman Brothers filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
- 2008 Sept 15 (Monday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell 504 points, the largest one-day loss since 11 September 2001.
- 2008 Sept 16 (Tuesday): The Fed agreed to a 'secured loan facility' for up to $85B to insurer A.I.G. in exchange for 80 percent equity in the company.
- 2008 Sept 17 (Wednesday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index dropped 450 points: down 8% for the week, and then back up on Thursday & Friday.
- 2008 Sept 17 (Wednesday): Gold rose $70 per ounce, the largest one-day jump in history.
- 2008 Sept 18 (Thursday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index climbed 410 points.
- 2008 Sept 19 (Friday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index climbed 368 points.
- 2008 Sept 21 (Sunday): Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last two major investment banks in the United States, both confirmed that they would become traditional bank holding companies, bringing an end to the era of investment banking on Wall Street. {Except that they did not . . .}
- 2008 Sept 23 Capitalist Warren Buffett bought $5B of stock in Goldman Sachs.
- 2008 Sept 25: The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision siezed Washington Mutual Bank after a ten-day run withdrew 9 percent of assets; JPMorgan Chase paid $1.9B for Washington Mutual Bank later that day.
- 2008 Sept 26: Wachovia Bank stock plunged 27 percent, while depositers withdrew $5B (1 percent of assets) on the same day.
- 2008 Sept 29: The F.D.I.C. announced the takeover of Wachovia's operations by Citigroup, a temporary measure intended to prevent Wachovia from failing.
- 2008 Oct 3: Wells Fargo agreed to acquire failing Wachovia for $15.1B in stock, which nullified the Citigroup deal. (Citigroup is pursuing claims for $60B in damages.)
- 2008 Oct 3: Congress passed a $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill.
- 2008 Oct 6 (Monday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index plunged below 10,000 for the first time since 2004.
- 2008 Oct 7 (Tuesday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index dipped over 500 points.
- 2008 Oct 6-7: Global stock market losses of $6.5 trillion (per Time Magazine, 10/2008)
- 2008 Oct 8: The I.M.F. predicted that the U.S. economy will grow just 0.1% next year, its worst rate in 18 years.
- 2008 Oct 8 (Wednesday): Nikkei Index plunged 9.4 percent; Indonesia shut down the country's exchange after the key index plunged more than 10 percent; Moscow's MICEX stock exchange shut down until Friday after losing more than 14 percent in the first half-hour of trading; Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index lost 5.2 percent; India's Sensex sank 4.3 percent; South Korea's Kospi Index lost 5.8 percent; Taiwan's key index fell 5.8 percent; and Singapore's benchmark tumbled 5.5 percent.
- 2008 Oct 9 (Thursday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell as low as 8,955.84 and ended the day down at 9,006 points.
- 2008 week of Oct 6-10: The Dow Jones Industrial Average index suffered the worst week in a hundred years, falling 18 percent.
- 2008 Oct 13 (Monday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index jumped 400 points by 8:30 a.m., up 976 points by end of day (biggest one-day point gain ever), and the S&P index rose 104 points (also the biggest one-day point gain ever).
- 2008 Oct 23 (Thursday): Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan warned of a 'credit tsunami'.
- 2008 Nov: The U.S. Federal Reserve began its first round of bond-buying (called 'Quantitative Easing' or QE1); the $1.7 trillion boost to the economy took place gradually thru March 2010.
- 2008 Nov 4: Democrats won the national elections for President and for many Senate & Congress seats; Barack Obama won the election for the U.S. Presidency with 52% of the popular vote, and with 365 electoral votes to John McCain's 173 electoral votes.
- 2008 Nov 10: The Federal Reserve & Treasury paid out another $27.5 billion for A.I.G. losses, making a total of $150B.
- 2008 Nov 17 (Monday): Japan declared a recession, the first since 2001 – and most people there blame the U.S.
- 2008 Nov 19: U.S. Senate hearing on the automotive crisis, with unsworn testimony by the heads of Chrysler, Ford & General Motors.
- 2008 Dec: Secret, interest-free loans by the U.S. Federal Reserve of $1.2 trillion to troubled 'too big to let fail' banks – including $107 billion to Morgan Stanley, $100 billion to Citigroup, and $91 billion to Bank of America – that were not revealed until August 2011.
- 2008 Dec 9: Negotiators revealed the terms of an emerging deal between the Bush White House and Congress under which a short-term $15 billion bailout for the Big Three would be overseen by a federal trustee (or 'car czar').
- 2008 Dec 19: President Bush announced approval of the automaker bailout plan, which would give loans of $17.4 billion to G.M. and Chrysler,
- 2008 Dec 31: At year-end, the Dow Jones Industrial Average index had fallen nearly 34 percent, the worst since 1931; the S&P index was down 38.5%, the worst since 1937.
Official National Debt in 2009: 10.626 TRILLION DOLLARS
on the day George Dubya Bush left office (an 86% increase).
The true Republican National Debt: 25 TRILLION DOLLARS
on the day that Dubya left office
— an increase of 336 percent in eight years,
giving George W. Bush the inenviable record
as the person who ran up the most debt in the history of Mankind !!
Barack Obama Fixing The Disaster
- 2009 Jan 20: Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.
- 2009 Feb 13: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was passed in Congress; no Republicans in the House and only three Republican Senators voted in favor. The bill included $288 billion in tax cuts, $357 billion for federal spending programs, and $144 billion to state & local fiscal relief.
- 2009 Feb 17: The 'recovery package' bill was signed into law by President Obama, adding $787 billion and 3.5 million jobs to the floundering American economy.
- 2009 March 9: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index bottomed at 6,547, a 12-year low.
- 2009 April 30: Chrysler Motors and 24 affiliates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after talks with lenders broke down.
- 2009 June 1: General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
- 2009 June 10: Chrysler Motors and affiliates emerged from bankruptcy (backed by $6.6B in financing from the federal government), and immediately sold several divisions to Fiat of Italy.
- 2009 July 10: General Motors ended bankruptcy proceedings.
- 2009 Nov: "The stock market is down 26% since 2000. (Inflation-adjusted, it's even worse.)"
— Time Magazine
- 2010 May 6 (Thursday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index had a record freefall event: in half an hour the stock market dropped more than it has ever dropped, all at once, 998.50 points (an intra-day loss of 9.2 percent), but managed to end the day down only 347 (-3.19%); the event was later named the '2010 Flash Crash'.
- 2010 May 7 (Friday): The unstable Dow Jones Industrial Average Index plunged another 140 pts, and closed down 672 points (-5.71%) for the week.
- 2010 July 21: President Obama signed into law the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
- 2010 Aug: Working Minds Philosophy Essay #92 "Reason-Based Taxation 2010"
- 2010 Nov: The U.S. Federal Reserve began its second round of bond-buying (called 'Quantitative Easing' or QE2); the $600 billion boost to the economy took place gradually thru June 2011.
- 2010 Nov 17: The General Motors post-bankruptcy IPO, the biggest initial public offering in U.S. history, raised $20.1 billion: 478 million common shares at $33 each for $15.77 billion and $4.35 billion in preferred shares.
- 2011 Jan 27: The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released its "Final Report On The Causes of The Financial Crisis In The United States" {see below}.
- 2011 July 21: Launch of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, headed by Richard Cordray.
{"What Wall Street Reform Means for You" video [3:14] from the White House via YouTube}
- 2011 Aug 4 (Thursday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell $512.76 – closing at $11,383.68 – the steepest point decline since 1 December 2008; S&P 500 futures fell 0.6 percent to $1,191.7. In worldwide trading over the next 24 hours London's FTSE 100 declined 3.5 percent to 5,393.14, Germany's DAX shed 3.8 percent to $6,172.00; France's CAC-40 lost 2.5 percent to 3,238.80; Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average slid 3.7 percent to 9,299.88; Hong Kong's Hang Seng index dived 4.3 percent to 20,946.14; China's Shanghai Composite Index lost 2.2 percent to 2,626.42.
- 2011 Aug 5 (Friday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell 5.8 percent for the week; the S&P 500 fell 7.2 percent for the week and is down 10.8 percent since July 22; the NASDAQ Composite index fell 24 points, or 0.9 percent, and was down 11.4 percent since July 22.
- 2011 Aug 5: Standard & Poor's did not like Congress's solution to the artificial debt ceiling crisis and downgraded the long-term credit rating of the United States government from AAA to AA+.
- 2011 Aug 8 (Monday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell another 634.76 points – closing at $10,809.85 – a loss of 5.55 percent.
- 2011 Aug 10 (Wednesday): The Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell another 519.83 points – closing at $10,719.94 – for a further loss of 4.62 percent.
- 2011 Friday Aug 19: U.S. stocks fell for the fourth week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average index closed at $10,817.65, down 4 percent for the week and down 15 percent since July 21. The S&P 500 stock index closed at $1,123.53, down 4.7 percent for the week (all ten industry groups that make up the index fell). The NASDAQ Composite index fell to 2,341.84, down 6.6% for the week.
- 2011 Oct 31: Major hedge fund M.F. Global filed for bankruptcy; considered the first U.S. victim of the European sovereign debt crisis.
. . . and you thought the crises were over!
- 2012 May 1: The Dow Jones Industrial Average index reached a new closing high of 13,279.32, closing at its highest level since 28 December 2007.
- 2012 May 10 (Thursday evening): Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase bank, announced that the company suffered $2 billion in losses for the second quarter, due to uncleared derivatives hedge transactions by a London employee; the amount may turn out to be six or even eight billion dollars higher.
- 2012 May 11 (Friday): JPMorgan's stock price fell by 9.3 percent, wiping out $14.4 billion of the company's value
- 2012 May 14 (Monday): JPMorgan's stock price fell by another 3.2 percent; shares in Bank of America fell 2.7 percent.
- 2012 June 13: Under pressure from Congress, the New York Federal Reserve released documents going back to 2007 that show complicity between the U.S. Federal Reserve System and British banks in faking the crucial L.I.B.O.R. {London Interbank Offered Rate} international benchmark interest rates.
- 2012 July 10: Peregrine Financial Group of Cedar Falls, Iowa filed bankruptcy after trying to conceal and then failing to recover from a shortfall of $200 million in customer accounts; CEO Russell Wasendorf has admitted embezzling for at least 20 years.
- 2012 July 13 (Friday): JPMorgan Chase bank announced that the bad trades deal in the U.K. has ballooned to a loss of $5.8 billion.
- 2012 Sept: U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced a third round of bond-buying (called 'Quantitative Easing' or QE3) as an open-ended monthly boost to the economy; the program starts with $85 billion per month until January, and $40 billion per month after that; the program could last for three years and might add up to $1.4 trillion.
- 2012 Sept: "Moody's Analytics estimates that the housing crisis wiped out $4.3 trillion in owner-occupied-home values from 2007 to 2010." — per TIME Magazine
- 2012 Nov 6: U.S. National Election for President & 35 Senators and all 435 Congress members, plus many state-level seats; incumbent Democrat Barack Obama beat Republican Mitt Romney, capturing 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206.
- 2012 Nov 7: Stock market 'sell-off', the worst trading day in 2012: the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index dropped below 13,000 (down 313 points, or 2.4%); the NASDAQ and S&P 500 also each sank more than 2%. (Wall Street's emotional reaction had more to do with European economic austerity events than the U.S. elections.)
- 2012 Dec: The U.S. Treasury sold its remaining stake in insurer A.I.G. at a profit of $22.7B, then announced that it is selling 200 million shares back to General Motors by year-end, followed by sale of its remaining stake in G.M. in the next 12 to 15 months (the G.M. deal is expected to produce a net loss of $36B for taxpayers).
- 2013 March 1: The 2011 'sequester' bill of the Republican Congress went into effect, stripping funding for many government programs and laying off or furloughing thousands of teachers, health workers, firefighters, and other government employees.
- 2013 March 5: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index rose to an all-time high of $14,253.77, the best since October 2007; Wall Street declared the G.O.P. Economic Meltdown of 2008 aka 'Great Recession' to be over, disregarding the deprivation on Main Street U.S.A.
- 2013 Tuesday Oct 1: The Repubitards in Congress escalated their tantrum and shut down large parts of the federal government, which put 800,000 government employees out of work, closed the national parks, halted oversight by the I.R.S. and other agencies, froze passport processing, and generally messed with the non-recovered economy – because President Obama stood his ground and refused to approve the Keystone pipeline, to reduce taxes for the One Percent, to allow unregulated drilling for oil & gas, and other stealth provisions of the legislation as proposed by the constipated House of Representatives.
- 2013 Wednesday Oct 16: The idiots of the Republican-led Congress folded at the last minute and ended the 16-day government shutdown impasse; the U.S. Senate voted a late-evening bipartisan 81-18, and the House then voted 185-144, while President Obama waited at the White House to apply his signature to a 'clean bill' that matched his proposal of two weeks prior; federal workers went back to work on Thursday and national parks & other facilities reopened, following what is being called the "16-Day TEA Party Shutdown"; the cost of this fiasco was elimination of $24 billion from the U.S. economy.
- 2014 Feb 3: Ben Bernanke stepped down as Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve; he was succeeded by Vice Chair Janet Yellen, the first woman to hold the position.
- 2014 July 3: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index rose above 17,000 for the first time in history, closing at $17,068.20.
- 2016 March 9: "The gentleman who is head of Goldman Sachs . . . said I was dangerous. And he is right, I am dangerous for Wall Street." — presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders
The Emperor Trump Era
- 2016 Nov 8-9: Incompetent hotel magnate Donald J. Trump was elected to be the 45th President of the United States, secretly helped by his pals in the Russian government.
- 2017 Jan 20: Fascist Emperor Trump was sworn in as President; he was in violation of the Emolu-ments Clause of the U.S. Constitution the moment that he swore his oath of office.
- 2017 Jan 25 Wednesday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index rose above $20,000 for the first time, closing for the day at $19,912.71 and the S&P 500 broke above $2,300 for the first time, which prognosticators view as market confidence in Emperor Trump's policies.
- 2017 March 24: The stock markets recovered slightly after a week of selloffs, based on the cancel-lation of the A.H.C.A. (TrumpCare) vote in Congress; the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed at $20,596.72, the S&P 500 Index closed at $2,343.98, and the NASDAQ Composite Index closed at $5,828.74 – all were down for the week.
- 2017 July 20: The NASDAQ Composite Index set an all-time record at $6,390; several other NASDAQ indexes also set new records.
- 2018 October: Collapse of the world economy due to $3 trillion in defaulted bonds ( as predicted in March 2018 }
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