An interesting side issue here is that the global stock indexes have just barely beat inflation over the last decade. With the current market slump, annual retu

An interesting side issue here is that the global stock indexes have just barely beat inflation over the last decade. With the current market slump, annual returns over the last ten years are probably negative. How will this affect investment, returns and opinions of the stock market in the future? Things like this have happened before...at the time, there were announcements of "the death of equities", unlikely followed by a huge surge in stock market returns. It'll be interesting to see what the future brings. This could all be a symptom of bad management/shareholder policy, the role of capital growing less important or even that most mature companies not really profitable. The really great returns over the last 10 years have been from small companies growing large and creating novel technology. Sometime I'd like to take an economics course to see whether anyone truly knows how wealth creation, company profits, stock prices and wages correlate. Or whether we even have the conceptual tools to discuss these things in a meaningful way. What the hell does 'wealth creation' really mean? Where do the green numbers on a company's balance sheet end up? If any of you know the answers to some of these questions, I'd love to know.