Monday, November 18, 2013, was a euphoric day on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching 16,000 points for the first time. Outsiders could have been forgiven for thinking this was a sure sign of the US economy’s revival and that the series of financial crises since 2008 were finally going to be confined to the past.
But almost as soon as the Dow Jones hit that landmark, bearish investors warned that the US economy was not yet strong enough for the excitement to be justified. As if to prove their point, stocks started to fall soon afterwards.
