That is why it can be so deadly without warning. But what none of the high-paid analysts is saying is that what happens on the stock exchange is really a reflection of what is happening in capitalist production. It's not the other way around. Not every stock market plunge results in an immediate capitalist economic crisis, just as not every corporate bankruptcy leads to a general industrial collapse. But a stock market failure is often an expression or anticipation of a crisis in production that is still in its early stages.
Stock exchanges are very sensitive to all the fluctuations and changes taking place in industry.
Today there is, for example, a classic capitalist crisis of overproduction sweeping the high-technology industries. The overproduction crisis is in computer chips. About 40 percent of the computer-chip market is in Asia. But it's not just Bill Gates and other rich capitalists who lost money on Wall Street. Some estimates are as high as 75 percent of the population.