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Reader question: Please explain this sentence: Stocks and jobs are joined at the hip. My comments: This means there’s an intricate correlation between the performance of the stock market and that of the job market. To wit, if the stock prices are high, the economy’s usually booming; and in a booming economy, usually a lot of new jobs are created. Conversely, if stock prices tumble, the economy in general takes a hit; and in a economic slowdown, jobs are often lost as employers cut back on production. So, therefore, stocks and jobs are “joined at the hip”, in the same way the two legs of us humans are joined at the hip. In other words, they’re inseparable. The fact that our two legs meet at the hip should suffice to explain the expression “joined at the hip” but this idiom is understandably believed to have derived from Siamese twins, two people born to be conjoined at the hip (or any other body part). This, from Phrase.org: Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874) were a celebrated pair of conjoined twins and, being from Siam (as Thailand was then called), they are the source of the expression Siamese twins. The pair were internationally known in their day and their celebrity has led many to assume that the term ‘joined at the hip’ also originated with them. This seems unlikely as the Bunker brothers were joined at the sternum, not the hip. | 
