Henry Kaufman was known to generations of financial journalists as Dr. Doom for his old-school bearishness. A mildly positive market call he made on Aug. 17, 1982, ignited a huge rally on Wall Street. Kaufman, the former head of research at Salomon Brothers, discusses that market call and media coverage of it in a new book, “The Day the Markets Roared: How a 1982 Forecast Sparked a Global Bull Market.” The book has special meaning to members of the New York Financial Writers’ Association: Kaufman recounts how that November he attended the Financial Follies, where longtime NYFWA member Bob Kozma portrayed him as “the very model of a modern-day economist” in a Gilbert and Sullivan spoof. Reporting on the show, American Banker wrote that “the member of the audience most convulsed with laughter was Henry Kaufman.”
Kaufman discusses his historical market call with Peter Coy, economics writer for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, who began covering Kaufman when he joined the business desk of the Associated Press in New York in 1985. Coy is a member of the NYFWA board.
And check out Peter Coy’s recent article on Kaufman: Henry Kaufman, 93, Looks Back on ‘The Day the Markets Roared’ – Bloomberg
2
