The Chart of the Day is available just for the asking.  I have added a few annotations and lines as it illustrates quite well how this has been an ongoing bear market since ‘99. There is the usual a-b-c corrective structure and depending on what degree of cycle you assume we are in the market should hold at the horizontal line.  Things could get more dire of you make the assumption that the top we had was of a super cycle degree.

In any event the 10% real return over 40 years, on an index that is massaged to a great extent and not taking into account human behavior of buying high and selling low, and not making any allowances for 1.5-2% MERs, is pretty awful. Makes one wonder if stock returns are simple a monetary phenomenon.

According to Shadow Stats the unemployment rate is presently about 18%, this is after the adjustments that have made by the BLS (Bureau of Labor Stats.) over the past ten years or so. Discouraged , or under- employed people are simple ignored under the new methodology leading to significantly lower numbers than would otherwise be the case. This applies to other “stats” like inflation, money supply etc.etc. Considering , moreover ,that at 2-3% of the population, the US has by far the highest proportion of their citizens behind bars, somewhere in the order of 10x as much as other civilized countries. As this costs more then sending them to Harvard the cost to the overall economy from unemployment and incarcerations is considerable. The unemployment rate at the peak of the depression was 25%, so on the positive side we are not that far off.