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In the last 2 days, bond market has declined a bit. All major news outlets published articles like these: Can We Ignore the Alarm Bells the Bond Market Is Ringing?

Such an event in bond market occurred back in ~1950 (according to the graph on that article). The stockmarket had a major dip around ~1932 due to the great depression but it has looked good since then till 2007. Overall things also bounced back in 1950, 1960, slow down in 1970 due to energy crisis and then it recovered after 1982.

I am not an economist but trying to understand how will the economy will behave when it will face a similar situation. Is it fair to compare 1950 US economy to 2016 US economy?

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Yes. It is a fair comparison.

Human nature, market behavior and principles of finance and economics have not changed much in the recorded history of mankind. For example, the principles set forth by Adam Smith in his opus The Wealth of Nations are just as relevant today as they were in 1776 when the book was published.

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    $\begingroup$ @downvoter Do you disagree? Downvoting without a reason doesn't help. $\endgroup$
    – zengr
    Jul 14, 2016 at 18:05
  • $\begingroup$ I am not the downvoter but I do have some criticism for this answer: Surely one would have to look at the share of services in US GDP, the import to GDP ratio, level of debt etc. before concluding that the situation in 2016 is the same 1950. Just because some aspects are the same (basic human nature, we still have two legs, the planet is still called Earth) some important aspects may have changed. $\endgroup$
    – Giskard
    Jul 15, 2016 at 6:38
  • $\begingroup$ @denesp: It is unclear how much detail the OP requires given the somewhat general nature of the question. $\endgroup$
    – FreeMarketUnicorn
    Jul 16, 2016 at 5:00

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