Apologies to Georges Santayana. It is late in the second week of October, 1929. The stock market peaked on September 4th, fell nearly 15% and has rallied back 8.5%.

• Annual per-capita income is $750. More than half of all Americans are living below a minimum subsistence level.
• The richest 1 percent own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. The bottom 93 percent have experienced a 4 percent drop in real disposable per-capita income since 1923. Individual worker productivity has risen 43 percent since 1919. But the rewards have been funneled to the top: the number of people reporting half-million dollar incomes has grown from 156 to 1,489 since 1920, a phenomenal rise compared to other decades. But that is still less than 1 percent of all income-earners.
• The backlog of business inventories has grown three times larger than the year before.
• A recession began in August. During this two month period, production declined at an annual rate of 20 percent, wholesale prices at 7.5 percent, and personal income at 5 percent.

Are you long or short?