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Recession LedgerThe long downturn, dated and checked

Subject

Markets

Stocks, bonds, housing and retail.

The market pages are about what happens to prices when the largest buyer is a central bank and then stops being one. Housing in 2017, the Dow in December 2018, the growth stocks of 2022, the retailers that spring, and the artificial-intelligence boom of 2023 are each a chapter of that.

They are read best alongside the Fed pages, which explain the buyer.

The Manhattan skyline lit up at night across the water

2023

  1. The mad men of artificial intelligence: developers claim their creation verges on the godlike

    The alarm was not raised by bystanders. It was raised, in writing, by the people with their hands on the machine, who then kept their hands on it.

2022

  1. The retail apocalypse was bloodier than it looked

    Revenue looked fine, considering. Considering what, was the whole story.

2018

  1. It's up, it's down, it's done: a day in the year of the Dow

    Whoever was pushing the market up on the last Friday of 2018 pushed harder than anyone had ever pushed. It fell anyway.

2017

  1. 2017 economic headwinds: housing bubbles popping up, and popping, everywhere

    The push to get back to 2006 took seven years and the same loosening of credit that got there the first time. Real wages had not moved.