Yes, like shares invested in the S&P 500, whose real value in 2010 was 50x (5000%) that of its 1950 value. (graph) Certainly an improvement over gold, whose real price compared to its 1950 value has ranged in various years from 55% to 450%. (graph)

I got my information from history books with a neutral point of view that were reviewed for accuracy.
...
Ronald Reagan is vilified for the Iran-Contra Scandal in which it is said that he traded weapons in exchange for getting the Hostages released. But if what you said was true, and Carter negotiated the release before Reagan took office, then the whole Iran=Contra scandal is false.

Good god. In Iran-Contra, the Reagan administration facilitated the sale of arms to Iran in the hope of freeing hostages in Lebanon taken from 1982 onward, years after the Iranian hostage crisis.

So what history books have you been getting your information from?

The ratings failed because the mathematical foundations of the system failed. Portfolio theory is not a panacea. Government economists would have used the same math to arrive at the same results.

Really? Remember this?

From an April 2007 instant-message exchange between two S&P employees:

Rahul Dilip Shah: 'btw -- that deal is ridiculous'

Shannon Mooney: 'I know right ... model def does not capture half of the risk'

Shah: 'we should not be rating it'

Mooney: 'it could be structured by cows and we would rate it'

Shah: 'but there's a lot of risk associated with it -- I personally do not feel comfy signing off as a committee member'

That suggests that the math didn't mislead the ratings agencies -- they ignored the math in order to make more money.