The biggest business story of this decade may not have happened yet. In fact, it may not happen until next year. It depends on when you believe the decade really ends.
The Arguments For Each Version
The French have a saying, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose - the more things change, the more they stay the same. So it is not surprising that this year we are having the same "end of decade" argument we had ten years ago with all the hype surrounding Y2k and the new millennium.
A New York Times article in December 1969 also generated considerable discussion about whether the Sixties decade (with all its visions of hippies) ended in 1969 or 1970. Was the end of the decade a cultural phenomenon or a chronological one?
In fact the controversy has raged in the American press since at least the presidency of John Adams.,
The "ends with 9" supporters note that we usually refer to decades as "the fifties," "the nineties," and so forth.
The "starts with 1" and "ands with 0" groups point to the retroactive imposition of the current calendar noting that there is no year 0; we jump from 1BC to 1AD. Since the first decade A.D. begins with the year 1, and a decade is ten years, it must end in 10. When we continue the pattern, every decade ends with a 0 year.
Our Informal Survey
The survey we conducted, a non-scientific one with a small sample, finds 52% believe this decade ends December 31, 2009 while 36% favor a December 31, 2010 ending for the decade. (10% "don't care".) You can see the results and add vote in our end of decade poll.
End Of Decade Highlights
Regardless of when you believe this decade ends, it has brought us some remarkable events:
- The Dow Jones average reached a high point of 5048 just before the Dot.com bust. It reached an all time high of 14,164 in 2007 before falling to 6547 at its lowest point during the recession in 2009.
- Apple launched the i-Pod in 2001 and the i-Phone in 2007
- Terrorist attacked the World Trade Center September 11, 2001
- Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and accounting firm Arthur Anderson went out of business a year later in a wave of insider trading scandals. Another wave of bankruptcies followed, led by Lehman Brothers in 2008, as the economy collapsed.
- The US invaded Iraq in 2004 and Google made its IPO the same year
- Twitter was launched in 2006
- Barak Obama was elected president in 2008
- Bernie Madoff arrested and charged the same year in a massive investor fraud scheme
- In 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared swine flu an international pandemic.
Regardless whether you believe this decade ends in 2009 or 2010, you must admit it has been an interesting decade.
