ABSTRACT
Even in the flattest landscape there are passes where the road first climbs to a peak and then descends into a new valley. Most of these passes are only topography with little or no difference in climate, language, or culture between the valleys on either side. But some passes are different. They are true divides. The last divide was crossed exactly a century earlier, in 1873. In its economic impacts that year's crash on the Vienna stock market was a non-event. All it did was to set off short-lived stock market panics in Frankfurt, London, Paris, and New York. Economically the 'oil shock' of 1973 and President Nixon's decision, two years earlier, to let the dollar 'float', can also be considered non-events. An economic statistician who looks only at figures such as gross national product, economic growth rates, foreign trade statistics, and so on, would see little effect beyond immediate, short-term, and statistically insignificant fluctuations.
