2001: Out of the blue, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announces that it will no longer issue 30-year bonds, for years the mainstay of the $18 trillion U.S. bond market. With short-term interest rates much lower than long-term, borrowing for 30 years no longer makes sense to the government. We do not need the 30-year bond to meet the government's current financing needs nor those that we expect to face in coming years says Undersecretary of the Treasury Peter R. Fisher. Cynics retort that the government is no more likely to be right about this than it is about anything else and that hindsight will probably show that this was a good time to borrow long-term."

The Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2001, p. C1;The New York Times, November 1, 2001, pp. C1, C7

1933: Trick or treat! In one of Wall Street's nastiest Halloween surprises, Albert H. Wiggin, former president of the Chase National Bank, testifies that his personal investment companies had borrowed money from Chase to short-sell $8 million worth of Chase's own stock as it crumbled in the Crash of 1929. The revelation of this disgraceful conduct inspires Congress to add a provision to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 banning corporate officers from short-selling their own shares.

The New York Times, November 1, 1933, p. 1;reprinted in Floyd Norris and Christine Bockelmann, The New York Times Century of Business (McGraw-Hill, New York, 2000), pp. 94-95.

1865: As "the rumor of vast riches open to any one who chose to invest in oil stock soon created a crowd of brokers eager to assist the outside public, a stock exchange dedicated to the trading of shares in petroleum companies is founded at 16 Broad Street in New York City. Within four years the typical listing has lost roughly 90% of its value."

James K. Medbery, Men and Mysteries of Wall Street (Fields, Osgood & Co., Boston, 1870;reprinted, Fraser Publishing Co., Wells, VT, 1968) pp. 280-282.