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December 1999
THE CENTURY IN REVIEW
Inside:
The Ultraviolet Catastrophe
Is There a God?
The Lawgiver
The End of the World as We Knew It
The Light Revolution |
If your family had bought
shares of Telephone stock in 1900, the year of that company’s
initial public offering and a time when the market penetration
in American homes amounted to only two percent – roughly
the same level of penetration achieved now by the wondrous
Internet worldwide – and, more importantly, if it had
held on to them, you would be in pretty good shape today. In
fact, you would probably be reading this publication now from
some place like the sun-kissed shore of Hawaii’s Kohala
Coast instead of huddled by a fire looking out over the dark
and rainy Puget Sound sky.
This is not to suggest that
the sailing was always smooth between the time that
great-grandfather bought those shares and the moment you
stepped off the Boeing 747 in Kona. In fact, many of the
wobbles in between looked a lot like the end of the world.
Other than the two world wars (World War I was known as the
war-to-end-all-wars, proving that pundits never have been
much good at making predictions), the atomic bomb, the threat
of a worldwide nuclear holocaust, a Great Depression and two
assassinated Presidents (two others died in office), there
have even been a number of financial panics that sent some of
the world’s most seasoned investors to the brink of
despair.
Download this Newsletter, "The
Century in Review", in its entirety as a PDF. To
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