Post-War Reality Re-Visited
market had a remarkable rise once the bombs started dropping on Iraq; the Dow Jones industrial average rose bOO points in a major hull market. And markets are supposed to hate war because of uncertainty.</br></br>Besides, the U.S. economy was in the middle of a recessionÛÓand who knew how high oil prices might spike?</br></br>Tlte Wall Street bulls were right; America not only won the war in record speed, but oil prices collapsed, while the United States gained that all-important intangibilityÛÓrespect from others once too eager to label Uncle Sam a post-Vietnam has-been.</br></br>euphoria is beginning to wear off a bit. After having gone up so fast, the talk is that a ÛÏcorrectionÛ is inevitableÛÓhow much is uncertain. In the "real" economy, a 7 percent unemployment rate this summer or fall is possible.</br></br>All of the old, basic, underlying economic and banking problems remainÛÓthe same ones that the bulls were willing to ignore while the main daily news diet was how many thousands of sorties the coalition forces had flown.