“Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike, they all come to look for America” - Simon & Garfunkel

We all loved America. Heck, even I, who could even back then see all the warts in the USA, loved America. So much so that growing up on a steady diet of Louis L’Amour, Sudden and JT Edson, I am dead sure I was a cowboy in one of my previous lives not very long ago. Of course I wanted to go to the USA, to study, to work. To innovate. Like all my friends.

American comics. Leave Archie. That was puerile. Think Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E Coyote, Sad Sack, Beatle Bailey, Peanuts and of course Calvin & Hobbes. American books. Mark Twain’s immortal Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Jack London’s “Call of the Wild”. American magazines. Readers’ Digest and National Geographic. How inspiring they were. While our beloved Amar Chitra Katha instilled pride in a glorious past, RD and Nat Geo kindled dreams of a glorious future.

American movies? “You talkin’ to me?” “Come on, punk, make my day!” “When you got to shoot, shoot; don’t talk”.

Even the American language. Although I shall always spell colour as colour and valour as valour, American was and is more hip than English. The accent, the slang.

American music. Simon & Garfunkel. Billy Joel. America was with it. Agreed, good ol’ Blighty had The Beatles and Pink Floyd and Clapton. And, thank almighty God for that. But, USA was where slave music morphed into church music and then mixed with white country music and gave us folk rock, rock and roll and rock. And, yes, Jazz and Blues, oh yes, the jazz and blues!

Well, I did not end up going to the USA. You can lay that down to either a lack of money, lack of good grades or lack of pluck. Or that I loved this crazy, chaotic country of ours called Bharat, i.e. India, more. Take your pick of the reason.

Whatever it be, in the end, somehow, somewhere, I did vicariously live the Great American Dream.

That was in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

“Time it was,
and what a time it was,
It was a time of innocence
A time of confidences
Long ago, it must be,
I have a photograph,
Preserve your memories
They’re all that’s left you…”
- Simon & Garfunkel

A nation in decline? Could it be that the American Dream itself is souring? See what the chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average is saying.

The red trendline in the chart joins the pre-Great Depression high of 380 in 1929 with the pre-Y2K high of 11497 in 1999. This trendline was broken in May 2021 and the Dow Jones climbed to an all time high of 36953 in January 2022. It seemed the markets, and USA, had beaten all odds, conquered the pandemic and even conquered economics with the magic wand of Quantitative Easing and was on its way to the target of 162750 (by 2026-2031) that we had set for it in, back in April 2016.

However, the Russia-Ukraine war happened. Man proposes, God disposes. Crude rose past $90 and past $100. Inflation soared, US Q1 GDP came in negative and the Fed is now chasing inflation, not growth. With Crude not looking like it is in any hurry to fall below $100, the era of cheap money is over. One wonders what levers the USA, addicted as it is to QE, really has to revive its economy whenever the sure-to-come recession hits.

Earlier, the US exit from Afghanistan in August last year brought back painful memories of its inglorious retreat from Saigon, Vietnam in 1975. More recently, four months into the Russia-Ukraine war, its sanctions on Russia are seen as ineffective and its throwing Russia out of SWIFT is widely seen as a colossal case of shooting itself in the foot and a clear invitation to Russia-China to put up a new world currency mechanism.

Such is now the reputation of USA, the global policeman, that no one really expects it do anything really significant whenever China does make its move on Taiwan.

Coming back to the 100-year chart of the Dow Jones featured above, and taking all of the above into consideration, the question arises as to how lucrative is the USA stock market going to be any more? If the Dow Jones, the most star-spangled symbol of the American dream ever, is itself falling with receding chances of being able to climb back towards our earlier target of 162750 (albeit by 2026-31), then more than disillusionment, it brings a feeling of plain sadness.

One wishes it were not so. It would be good to see the USA get back on its feet, because, it is true that despite all that their faults of foibles, the Yanks were a better lot than the Brits and truly had a lot going for them. And, sure as hell, they are better than the Chinese.

Because… Hey USA…