Editorial: Comparing October 2003 to today: not a lot has changed

On Oct. 24, 2003, unless you were living under a rock or were trapped in a mine – as 49 Russian miners were – you knew exactly what was going on in the stock market.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped to 9,497 points that day, a number that is now remembered as the lowest the Dow has been in nearly five years. Suddenly, that record doesn’t look so safe.

Monday, the Dow plummeted to 9,523 points, before rallying to close around 9,900. But the intersession low marked the average’s first trip out of five figures since 2004.

As the stock market seems to be limboing to the tune of “How Low Can You Go?”, this marks the ideal time to remember the world as it was the last time the market showed such flexibility.

Oct. 24 was the last day the Concorde, the supersonic airplane that completed trans-Atlantic flights in about three and a half hours, completed a flight.

It was also the day the Senate Intelligence Committee finalized its critical report of CIA Director George Tenet and others who gathered the intelligence that led to the Iraq War. It was just five months removed from President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” proclamation from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

It was the day before the Marlins – the Marlins! – beat the Yankees – the Yankees! – to win the World Series. And it was just four days after a man survived a fall over Niagara Falls – without a barrel or any other protective device.

Yes, Oct. 24, 2003, was an easier time than was Oct. 6, 2008. Investors called it a bear market, not a depression, as we’re starting to hear now. That darned war was (maybe) still a justifiable nuisance, as opposed to the absolute disaster we now know it to be. Sarah Palin was just the affable, former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, not an in-too-deep, dunderhead of a potential vice president of the United States.

Still on the minds of Americans as Wall Street slipped that October five years ago was the SARS scare, and the memory of seven astronauts lost to the ether when the space shuttle Columbia exploded.

It was the year that Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson both were arrested for sex charges, and the year the Terminator became the Governator. It was the age of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” though we have no idea what the boys thought of the $20 bill’s new color scheme.

Uday and Qusay were killed. Bob Hope and Mr. Rogers died.

Twenty-two days after finally getting licensed to drive, I crashed my mom’s car. Britney kissed Madonna. Ben dumped Jen. Or did Jen dump Ben? Howard Dean still had some credibility. Wireless Internet was maybe gonna catch on.

Was it really just five years ago?

While this retrospective may not say much about our current financial woes, it’s fun to look back on just how far we’ve come since Oct. 24, 2003.
A lot of work to end up back in the same place, if you ask me.

– Bill Oram, editor, william.oram@umontana.edu