Is the recent market turbulence just a tiny price that long-term stock-market investors pay to enjoy very large excess returns over bonds?

The article, titled "The Equity Premium Puzzle," asks a question that should strike joy in the hearts of stock-market investors.

It was one thing for the average stock-market investor to panic.

Professor Rhodes-Kropf cautions stock-market investors not to take solace in that difference.

IF actions speak louder than words, the person many consider the nation's most astute stock-market investor - and surely its most influential - seems, at least, to be whispering "sell."

He is described as an under-40 stock-market investor and a New York collector of books and manuscripts on American history.

In 1996, he asked whether "irrational exuberance" had consumed stock-market investors, and equity prices around the world briefly tumbled before resuming their ascent.

In the current scandal, Japan's largest securities houses have admitted to making improper payments of more than $1 billion to about 200 stock-market investors to cover losses in the crash last year.

Only a big company could continue operating the financially troubled nuclear plants and still appeal to stock-market investors, they said.

This otherwise innocent letter to stock-market investors turns on its head the moral verdict of the Internet boom: in the world according to Google, investors aren't victims but perps.