The excellent 2013 Motley Fool article " Bear Markets in Modern Times " provides a quick backstory on the biggest drops in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEMKT: DIA) since the late 1960s . The weight of inflation on U.S. economic activity, or gross domestic product (GDP), eventually prompted then-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to roughly double interest rates in 1980. If you extrapolate too much into a company's falling stock price or current results during a bear market, you might begin to imagine cracks in the armor of long-term stories that in fact remain intact.