Measuring Financial Success/Failure

There are two significant factors (in my humble opinion) that tell you the story of a good year, and a bad year.  They also tell you of a bad decade.  Listed below  are the first the CD rates since 1965, and then the GDP percentage since 1965.  A lot of people have no memory of how great the GDP was in the 1970s and 1980s., nor do they realize at various times....we had CDs running at more than 8-percent.:

Year, CD, GDP
1965, 4.88-percent, 6.5-percent
1966, 6.14-percent, 6.6-percent
1967, 5.95-percent, 2.7-percent
1968, 6.39-percent, 4.9-percent
1969, 8.95-percent, 3.1-percent
1970, 9.06-percent, .2-percent
1971, 6.06-percent, 3.3-percent
1972, 5.65-percent, 5.2-percent
1973, 10.71-percent, 5.6-percent
1974, 12.06-percent, minus .5-percent
1975, 7.89-percent, minus .2-percent
1976, 6.31-percent, 5.4-percent
1977, 6.96-percent, 4.6-percent
1978, 11.28-percent, 5.6-percent
1979, 13.97-percent, 3.2-percent
1980, 17.74-percent, minus .2-percent
1981, 17.98-percent, 2.6-percent
1982, 15.12-percent, minus 1.9 percent
1983, 10.17-percent, 4.6-percent
1984, 12.08-percent,  7.3-percent
1985, 9.6-percent, 4.2-percent
1986, 7.83-percent, 3.5-percent
1987, 8.19-percent, 3.5-percent (Black Friday Year)
1988, 9.28-percent, 4.2-percent
1989, 10.40-percent, 3.7-percent
1990, 8.57-percent, 1.9-percent
1991, 7.17-percent, minus .1-percent
1992, 4.42-percent, 3.6-percent
1993, 3.39-percent, 2.7-percent
1994, 6.78-percent, 4.0-percent
1995, 6.71-percent, 2.7-percent
1996, 5.75-percent, 3.8-percent,
1997, 5.90-percent, 4.5-percent
1998, 5.67-percent, 4.5-percent
1999, 6.07-percent, 4.7-percent
2000, 6.94-percent, 4.1-percent
2001, 5.45-percent, 1.0-percent
2002, 2.16-percent, 1.8-percent
2003, 1.30-percent, 2.8-percent
2004, 2.66-percent, 3.8-percent
2005, 4.62-percent, 3.3-percent
2006, 5.54-percent, 2.7-percent
2007, 5.40-percent, 1.8-percent
2008, 4.37-percent, minus .3-percent
2009, 1.76-percent, minus 2.8 percent
2010, .75-percent, 2.5-percent
2011, .67-percent, 1.6-percent
2012, .58-percent, 2.2-percent
2013, .29-percent, 1.7-percent
2014, .13-percent, 2.6-percent
2015, .14-percent, 2.9-percent
2016, .15-percent, 1.5-percent

CD-wise, it's been crap for a decade now.  The days when CDs were a minimum of 8-percent haven't been seen since 1990.  The days of a four-percent or more GDP?  That hasn't been seen since 2000.  The GDP over a decade being four-percent or more in seven of the ten years?  Well....that hasn't been seen since the late 1970s.  You can dish out a lot of crap over both the Bush and Obama Administrations with the damage done.