We have not had an honest-to-God bear market in ninety years. But what about 2008? Or 2001? Or 1987? Yeah, yeah, the market went down, it’s true, but in every single down-market since the 1930s, the federal government has intervened to stop the bleeding. The natural, organic, and marvelously healthy process of a sweeping financial cleaning hasn’t been permitted since the days of FDR, since the nanny state government feels duty-bound to spare its citizens anything that might hurt even a little bit.

The last big cleaning – – which spanned 1929 to 1933 – – spawned laws and cultural changes that benefited the United States for nearly seventy years before they were dismantled. The most egregious “help” the government has offered came, of course, during the last little downturn, during a few weeks in late February and early March of 2020, which was met with trillions and trillions of dollars of stimulus, forgiveness, and all-around federal fellatio.