If you happened to be in the equity markets during 1987, at least on the long side, there is little doubt that the stock market crash that October cost you some money. In the days that followed one economist after another popped out of their ivory towers to announce that North America, if not the entire world, was heading into a depression.

Since we can't recall the Great Depression of 1988 we suspect that the cause of the 'crash' was something other than what most suspected then and, most likely, what most understand even now.