FIRE (Finance, Insurance, And Real Estate) Economy

The origin of the FIRE acronym is not known. However, it started to appear in newspaper articles in the United States in the 1980s in stories about the remarkable rise of the finance, insurance, and real estate industries. For example, the October 1982 article in The Washington Post titled “New York Once Nearly Bankrupt, Rides Manhattan’s Boom” describes the boom of the financial sector in New York at the beginning of the 1980s, which created 160,000 jobs. In 1986, FIRE appeared in a New York Times article related to the financial sector. Phillip S. Gutis, the author of the article, “Turmoil Ahead in Real Estate,” wrote that despite the boom in the U.S. financial sector, it had not created a significant number of jobs. Two ...