with bonds yielding up to 11% and stocks averaging a return of less than 3% throughout the decade. As a result, even institutions that have so far remained in the financial markets are pouring money into short term investments and such "alternate equity" investments as mortgage-backed paper, foreign securities, venture capital, leases, guaranteed insurance contracts, indexed bonds, stock options, and futures. At the same time, individuals who are not gobbling up hard assets are flocking into money market funds to nail down high rates, or into municipal bonds to escape heavy taxes on inflated incomes. Few corporations can find buyers for their stocks, forcing them to add debt to a point where balance sheets seem permanently out of whack. On Wall Street, the flight from stocks has forced firms to push alternative investments hard -- thereby drawing still more money from the stock market. Further, this "death of equity" can no longer be seen as something a stock market rally -- however strong -- will check. It has persisted for more than 10 years through market rallies, business cycles, recession, recoveries, and booms. The public was first drawn to equities in big numbers in the 1950s by a massive promotion campaign by Wall Street that worked because the economic climate was right: fairly steady growth with little inflation. To bring equities back to life now, secular inflation would have to be wrung out of the economy, and then accounting policies would have to be made more realistic and tax laws