Old financial news

[fabijo]

Does anybody know of an online resource for finding old newspaper archives? I'm just curious to see what kinds of financial headlines and articles were around at the end of 1994, just prior to the start of the 90's bull run.

 

[fabijo]

I think I may have answered my own question! Just a few more tweaks to my search terms in google and a little browsing around, I came up with ibiblio.com. Here is their page for newspaper archives online:

http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/internet/archives.html

 

[fabijo]

This is awesome! I did a search for "economy" in the San Francisco Chronicle for January 1995. I found an article called, Economic forecast calls for continued expansion
LOOKING AHEAD to 1995
dated January 1, 1995.

The main source for the article was Lehman Brothers outlook on the economy for the next couple years (1995, 1996). They were worried about a boom-bust scenario because the unemployment rate was only 5.6%! (We are currently at 4.5%) Here's what they said about the full employment:

In previous such situations, a near fully-employed economy has brought spiraling inflation, speculative economic and financial market processes, spiraling interest rates, eventually a credit crunch and recession - what cyclically has been called a "boom-bust" pattern.

...

The odds of a "boom-bust" scenario are significant, assessed at 25 percent, with a possible continuing overheated economy in 1995 that could force the Fed to raise interest rates far more sharply than is expected in the Baseline scenario and enough to induce a recession by 1996. If economic growth and inflation do not show some signs of slowing by the second or third quarters, then the odds on boom-bust will have to be increased.

The whole article can be found here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/e/a/1995/01/01/BUSINESS1375.dtl&type=printable