What was the rhetoric back then? I have heard about "economic malaise" in the 70's. Anyone have some perspective to share? What was it like to have no growth for 20 years?
Thanks.
Stocks were dead, gold and uncut diamonds were the investments of choice.
Inflation was a killer-- in 1982 I had a
checking account that paid 10% interest. By 1981 that idiot at the Federal Reserve had raised interest rates to something like 20%. Everybody was joining neighborhood/workplace bartering networks.
The military was going through the post-Vietnam "hollow force". Everyone outside the military was sure that it would collapse because the draft had ended. Everyone in uniform was a lot happier that they didn't have to deal with draftees. We had plenty of problems with operating funds, maintenance funds, racism, alcohol, sexual abuse, and rampant drug use. I attended official Navy training on how to help your shipmate survive a LSD flashback, and on large ships there were a number of places where officers did not go without a Marine escort or in groups of 3+. There were rumors that we were going to have to submit to urinalysis, but they'd never get the authority for that invasion of privacy.
When the 1980 administration decided to get serious about the Cold War, at one morning muster I found out that my pay had been raised by 25%.
When driving during 1973-1984, you didn't let your gas tank get less than half-full (especially on long road trips) because you were never really quite sure whether you'd be able to fill the tank at the next gas station. If your car was 10 years old people then were amazed that you could keep it going that long-- or sorry that you couldn't afford to trade up. Body rust was a huge problem.
I disagree with your "no growth" assessment. There was plenty of growth, but it was very lumpy and unevenly distributed. I had more part-time employment than I could handle in high school, and I had military skills. Wages were losing to inflation, but people with skills were getting promoted to higher salaries. People who knew computers were gods, especially the Atari, Commodore, and Apple geeks. People were still investing in stocks and earning dividends, but that was hard. Even though the 1973-74 recession was brutal, most of the time you could find optimistic investors-- even if it was just gold coins. A lot of assets were in short-term CDs, corporate bonds, and Treasury bonds because inflation was so high.
Nobody rang a bell in 1982 to signal the beginning of the bull market. Everyone was sure that the country was going to continue to lumber along through some sort of ugly transition from our former industrial might to a new computer economy, hopefully one with lower inflation. Nobody had any faith that a bull market was underway, and 1987's Black Monday was just the end of a "secular bull".