Generational Dynamics World View

[pbrower2a]

(11-06-2019, 09:27 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(11-06-2019, 08:30 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: What word would you prefer that I use?  Personally I consider the "high" to be the most repressive era even in the US after WWII, but at least everyone on this forum knows what time period it means.

I tend to believe that it was called a high because it actually was a loosening of the restrictive mood of the GDWWII years. Emotions may have been strained for those not in the Organization Man/Suzy Homemaker camp, but for the most part not as much as the turnings before and after. Many blue and white collar families alike, so long as they were not communist sympathizers didn’t have to worry about daddy coming home jobless. Mom and pop stores and diners were still abundant in an era of stability where the biggest disruption may have been Elvis Presley’s wiggle which some considered obscene. Households of the “Leave it to Beaver” era were swept away in a sea of prosperity and, for the most part outside of Hollywood, family stability as divorce was still highly stigmatized within the mainstream.  And while the earth began to shake a bit when Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus, the major upheaval was still a decade away.

Xenakis prefers "recovery". The post-Crisis might be a hard era of extreme hardship due to the destruction of institutions and infrastructure -- think of Poland after WWII. I have showed imagers of Warsaw immediately after the war. The middle class, including the intelligentsia, the szlachta (a semi-aristocratic class), and of course the Jews (who were many of the country's entrepreneurs)  were decimated. Such children as there are are often orphans. Public institutions must be re-established. People are almost all uprooted. Add to this, the country went from a proud independence to a complete subjection under horrible masters only to go quickly under the rule of masters that the People would have never voted in.    

Physical reality will shape what is possible, as will the character of the ruling elite that either returns, emerges, or is imposed from elsewhere. People will do what is necessary, which might be back-breaking toil for near-starvation wages.... or two meals of porridge or soup with perhaps a little bread and a hot beverage on the side -- and a makeshift bed in a makeshift dwelling. 

Most people will have little desire to shake things up. Things were shaken enough in recent years of the most dangerous years of the Crisis Era, thank you. Normal starts to civilian careers and family life have been put off perhaps into the mid-20's, and any taste for experiment is gone. People are making up for lost time and opportunities. So get wed, get a civilian job (just about anything is better than combat), and be thankful that you can do that. Soldiers may have gotten to see the world -- but they saw it at its worst. What might have been a charming village before the war in France was likely a steaming wreck with the stench of death, espcially in the summer of 1944. Exotic ideas? Forget them!

[beechnut79]

(11-03-2019, 11:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The people most vulnerable to persecution are all-too-often people who by any reasonable standard are 'model majorities' -- people identifiably different, but successful. That irks the Hell out of those of the anti-human, anti-capitalist forms of capitalism. Think of Jews in Spain before Jews got the choice to flee with nothing or convert and keep their property -- but be monitored for any lapses into old Jewish ways of life (in Spain, such could include failure to eat pork(pork of course violates Kosher dietary laws), keeping seven-fold candelabras, using unleavened bread on Easter Sunday, giving their children Hebrew names such as "Abraham" and "Sarah" (not always a strictly-Jewish practice -- see Puritan-era New England and of course Mennonites), or having secretive meetings on Saturday or known Jewish holidays.  

German Jews had no chance to convert. (If anything, I can see one thing that would have solved all the moral problems of the German and Austrian peoples between 1933 and 1945  -- Judaism!) Indeed, I once had an extended conflict with a neo-Nazi who attributed all sorts of vices, none of them particularly Jewish, to me. So I am a smart liberal with a German-sounding surname and I hate Nazis. I also had strawberry-blond hair at one time, which he could not see but I didn't tell him about. In the end I told him the following:

1. he is not the first to use antisemitic slurs against me; practically any German surname. is potentially a "Jewish" surname.
2. what he says about Jews is completely wrong with my experience. Most obviously Jews are not particularly greedy and materialistic, and if they succeed at something it is not out of a lust for ostentatious indulgence.
3. Even if the smears are false because I am not Jewish, they still hurt. Many German-Americans have experienced such.
4. The vast majority of Germans and German-Americans hate Nazis for much the same reason that most Italian-Americans hate Mafia groups and most Hispanic groups hate the drug-trafficking cartels. Every ethnic and religious group that I have ever seen hate the rogues of their groups.
5. Holocaust denial is absurd, cruel, and indefensible. It is only a matter of time before someone denies or trivializes race-based slavery.
6. As a nominal Christian who recognizes the Nazis as proof of the need for Hell for the most egregious sins possible so that Heaven can be free of those sins, I can't imagine anyone risking eternal damnation by being a Nazi. And what if God is Jewish? I can't imagine any swastikas or Nazi salutes in Heaven, but all righteous people get to accept the truth.  
7. I consider the Jews my cultural and moral brethren, and if I had to choose between being a Jew and a Nazi I would convert to Judaism because I could keep my moral and cultural values intact as a Jew. To be a Nazi I would have to be evil.

Culture? This is as German as one can get. Johann Sebastian Bach would have heard his truest successor as a master of counterpoint in this rondo, really a one of the most wonderful fugues possible until   the climax in which Mahler finally completes the phrase, after which all else is a short-lived anticlimax . Bach typically ends his fugue only when completing the phrase... so Mahler composes this 150 years after Bach dies. The world was very different in 1904 from what it was in 1750, and even 40 years after Mahler (1860-1911) died the world would be even more different. For one thing, the great music eritten in 1951 and later would largely be jazz with little connection to Back or even Mahler.

 



Enjoy! Great counterpoint recognizes only one culture, the culture of excellence.

But it was a German-American who led us through the rigors of WWII and later was very popular as President.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 07-Nov-2019 58 years vs 80 years

(11-05-2019, 12:06 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: > Yes, I think that the 80 year span is a good theory because it is
> both simple and inevitable. That elder generation had been fading
> from public life/public influence due to its aging, and now that
> generation has begun to rapidly disappear. I recall a description
> of age 80 as the "fragility barrier"-an individual's body has
> become quite fragile, and he is living on borrowed time, in
> effect.

The 80 year span is a completely different thing from the span in
the 58 Year Hypothesis.

The 58 Year Hypothesis applies to any situation where a catastrophic
event occurs that affects the entire population.

Focusing on the crisis war cycle, 58 years is the length of time from
the end of the crisis war -- more specifically the crisis war climax
-- to the beginning of the next Fourth Turning Crisis era -- 1945 to
2003 in the current context. The 58 Years is a hard number -- it
depends ONLY on generational changes, and is not affected by events.

The 80 year span refers to something completely different -- the end
of one crisis war to the end of the next crisis war -- 1945 to 2025 in
the current context. However, this is NOT a hard number, since it
depends on the start and length of the crisis war, and that depends on
the time when the Regeneracy occurs, which is an external event at
variable times. So the 80 year span can become a 70 year span or a 90
year span, depending on when the Regeneracy occurs.

Code:

|-----------------------------------------|-------|......|
|                                         |       | War  |
|                                        4T   Regeneracy Climax2
| Recovery    Awakening       Unraveling  |     Crisis   |
Climax1                               Climax1+58       Climax1+80?
1945                                    2003            2025?

[Hintergrund]

(11-06-2019, 08:30 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Personally I consider the "high" to be the most repressive era even in the US after WWII, but at least everyone on this forum knows what time period it means.

Are you a Boomer? Because only a "Prophet" can say something that ignorant. Hell, there are people in Germany who claim the 1950s were WORSE THAN UNDER HITLER!

[Hintergrund]

(11-07-2019, 01:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The post-Crisis might be a hard era of extreme hardship due to the destruction of institutions and infrastructure -- think of Poland after WWII. I have showed imagers of Warsaw immediately after the war. The middle class, including the intelligentsia, the szlachta (a semi-aristocratic class), and of course the Jews (who were many of the country's entrepreneurs)  were decimated.

Why post-crisis? I'm pretty sure all of that was caused by those nazi guys.

(11-07-2019, 01:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Exotic ideas? Forget them!

Existentialism became pretty big in the post-Crisis era. Unfortunately.

[Hintergrund]

Oh, and about those who think big wars were there for population reduction: After World War 2, there were more humans alive than before! So much about that.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 06-Nov-2019 World View: Deficit

vincecate Wrote:> What are other people's expectations as far as
> deflation/stability/inflation of reserve currencies? If you think
> deflation, is it for a limited time period and then eventually
> inflation?

> I think the US deficit is really well over $1 trillion per year
> and that the Fed will end up printing/buying more than $1 trillion
> per year. I think people will start to realize it won't
> "normalize its balance sheet" or even slow the printing. At some
> point people will start to flee the bond bubble (the Fed has
> driving pries to crazy levels) and the Fed will be about the only
> buyer. Similar thing in at least the Yen and Euro. I think the
> riots around the world are a hint that inflation is starting.
> Once inflation starts people will flee bonds. Central banks can't
> let interest rates go up or their governments will be bankrupt
> (and stock markets will crash), so they will keep printing and
> buying bonds. Is there any other way this can go really?

> Ray Dalio, "The World Has Gone Mad and the System Is Broken"
> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/world-has...-ray-dalio
> Some big change is coming, what is going on now with crazy levels
> of money printing is not sustainable. I may end in war, but my
> guess in high inflation, though these are not in any way mutually
> exclusive. :-)

I've posted this in the past, but I've become very philosophical
about the national debt.

I really have to laugh every day when I see some politician or analyst
or pundit say that "some day" we're going to have to start reducing
the national debt. It's a big joke. That's never going to happen.
Any politician that says it is completely full of crap.

And what difference does it make? If the national debt is $20
trillion or $30 trillion or $100 trillion, how much will it matter
when we're at war with China? Or, as Higgie says, when we enter a new
dark age. Or when the AI robots are our overlords?

It's going to be an unbelievable disaster no matter what the number is.
Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

• US Gross National Debt jumps $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2019, to
  $22.7 trillion

[John J. Xenakis]

** 07-Nov-2019 World View: Generational Dynamics 'Doom Articles'

Guest Wrote:> Many doom articles. However, you will find very little available
> anywhere else, in a mainstream fashion, which reports anything
> even half truthfully. I'd rather have doom articles and prepare
> for the worst than to live in LaLa Land and prepare for
> nothing.

utahbob Wrote:> John, thank you for running this forum. I tell people that they
> are high for the past decade if they think a peace agreement in
> Syria can be implemented. Due to the barbaric behavior of the
> cultures involved, like this:
> https://twitter.com/BabakTaghvaee/status...0024142850 It
> will be a century or more before ethnic group could forgive each
> other. With modern technology being able to store and archive
> horrible events like this, it will be harder to over come cultural
> biases that come with when a ethnic/religious/ tribe women are
> violated. The dark ages are there again.

That's an interesting point about using modern technology to store and
archive atrocities.

With regard to "doom articles": You're right that there is no other
web site that covers this kind of material. It really is amazing that
GenerationalDynamics.com is unique in the world. The generational
methodology has proven to be a major development for producing
accurate analyses and forecasts. No other web site comes close.

While I'm at it, let me provide an update on the future of
Generational Dynamics and me. As I wrote a year ago, I'm going to run
out of money, and that will be the end of Generational Dynamics and
me. I had expected to be gone by now. But I've cut expenses, and I
got a small amount of work writing. In addition, I've gotten a number
of small donations, for which I'm extremely grateful. These have
allowed me to extend my life into next year, probably somewhere
between February and April. But it's not enough. There's still
always hope that someone will offer me a job as a Senior Software
Engineer or a journalist/analyst, but after two years it's clear that
people my age are almost universally viewed as garbage, and there is
no credible hope for me. As for the Generational Dynamics forum,
Higgie has agreed to take it over when the time comes.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 07-Nov-2019 World View: Russia and Turkey

DaKardii Wrote:> John, I have a few things to say about "18-Oct-19 World View --
> Generational analysis of Turkey-Syria war and ceasefire
> agreement," which can be found at
> http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...191018.htm.

> At one point in the article, you state: ...

> You seem to be implying that Russia is the main external force
> pushing Assad to continue the war, which is a non-crisis war for
> Syria, well past its natural ending point. You also seem to be
> implying that Turkey is playing a similar role regarding the
> rebels. If that's the case, then I agree with both of those
> implications.

With regard to Russia and Assad, it's the other way around. The war
would have fizzled out quickly if it hadn't been for Assad. Assad is
a sociopathic monster, who wants to finish his father's job of
exterminating the Sunni Arabs. Even so, he would have lost to the
Arabs, except that he got the Russians to support him in return for
giving Russia two military bases inside Syria, the Tartus naval base
and Hmeimim airbase. Putin is completely lacking in any morality
whatsoever, but he isn't the same kind of sociopathic monster as
Assad. For Putin, it's just opportunistic genocide and ethnic
cleansing.

Turkey obviously doesn't want any part of the war in Syria, but
they've been forced into it because of the flood of millions of
refugees, and because of the threat of a Kurdish state in Syria on the
Turkish border. For that reason, Turkey is involved in the war, but
as little as possible.

DaKardii Wrote:> In my opinion, the war in Syria is causing the entire Middle East
> to slowly be transformed into a "preparation ground" for a much
> larger conflict between Russia and Turkey. Turkey is attempting to
> expand (its influence or territory) southward in hopes of bringing
> enough of the region under its influence or control, because it's
> going to need that if it expects to win a war against
> Russia. Meanwhile, Russia is attempting to expand (its influence
> or territory) into the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Balkans to
> create buffer zones against Turkey, while also using third parties
> such as Iran, Syria, and even Saudi Arabia to curb Turkey's own
> expansionism.

> This upcoming conflict will be many decades in the making. In my
> opinion, it can all be traced back to the end of the last war
> Russia and Turkey fought: World War I, which was also a crisis war
> for both countries. World War I led to the collapse of both the
> Russian and the Ottoman Empires. Both countries lost large amounts
> of territory and had their monarchies overthrown. Neither country
> ever got over the loss of their empires, even with new regimes in
> power. This was made clear both during WWII and during the Cold
> War, although during those times neither country was in the mood
> to fight another round. They were in generational High, Awakening,
> and Unraveling eras back then. The collapse of the USSR was a
> turning point. Since then, several conflicts that can be seen as
> part of a wider conflict between Russia and Turkey have broken
> out. Nagorno-Karabakh, Yugoslavia, the wars in the Northern
> Caucasus, Ukraine, and now Syria.

> It doesn't matter who is in power in either country. Conflict is
> inevitable. Russia and Turkey were supporting opposing sides in
> these conflicts before anyone had even heard of either Vladimir
> Putin or Recep Erdogan. The foreign policies of those two leaders
> are not the disease itself, but rather symptoms of the
> disease.

Your reference to Syria as a "preparation ground" for a much larger
war is a very appealing analogy -- thinking of a growing mass of
flammable tinder on the ground, waiting for a match to light it.
However, I think it's now months away, not decades.

I've written many times about the many wars between Russia and Turkey.

** 25-Nov-15 World View -- Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...tm#e151125

Nonetheless, I have a great deal of trouble saying with certainty that
there will be a crisis war between Turkey and Russia. Here are some
issues:

• Before the Ottoman conquest, Anatolia was the Orthodox Christian
  Byzantine Empire, and the Muslims and Orthodox Christians have largely
  coexisted peacefully since then.
  
  
• Although WW I was a devastating crisis war for both Russia and Turkey,
  it was not a war they fought against each other.
  
  
• They did fight each other in the Crimean War, but that was less
  a war with each other and more a war over Jerusalem, as Russia considered
  itself the protector of Jerusalem since the fall of the Byzantine Empire.
  
  
• China is arresting millions of Uighur Muslims and using them as
  slave labor for its war machine. This is a potentially explosive
  issue for Turkey, since the Uighurs and the other Muslim ethnic groups
  in Central Asia are mostly Turkic. Furthermore, Russia has a stake in
  protecting Central Asia from China, because those countries were part
  of the Soviet Empire. So Russia and Turkey are aligned in Central
  Asia against China.

On the other hand, the war between the Christian Armenians and the
Turkic Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh could expand into a larger war
between Russia and Turkey, but I wouldn't expect that, since it's
an Awakening era for both countries.

So you may be right that there will be a generational crisis war
between Russia and Turkey. I may have suggested it myself in the
past. But it's complicated, and certainly not an open and shut case.

One more thing: You say "Russia and Turkey were supporting opposing
sides in these conflicts," and that's true, but it's still not a war
between Russia and Turkey. Particularly what we've seen recently,
Russia and Turkey have supported opposing sides in Syria but even more
than that they've cooperated with each other to prevent the war from
expanding.

[Hintergrund]

(11-06-2019, 01:14 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: 1T killings are either victors' retribution (leftists and liberals under Franco)

Didn't he do most of that during the 4T before? Then again, it seems that he's the kind of guy who doesn't give up a grudge.

Other than that, good list.

[Warren Dew]

(11-07-2019, 08:14 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

Code:

|-----------------------------------------|-------|......|
|                                         |       | War  |
|                                        4T   Regeneracy Climax2
| Recovery    Awakening       Unraveling  |     Crisis   |
Climax1                               Climax1+58       Climax1+80?
1945                                    2003            2025?

This graph seems to imply that the fourth turning necessarily begins at a 58 year echo.  Is that what you mean to say, including the implication that the timing between the end of a cycle and the beginning of the next crisis period is exact?

Also, it seems to imply that the regeneracy and the beginning of the crisis war are the same event; is that what you mean?

I'm not arguing for or against at the moment; I'm just trying to get more clarification on what you're saying Generational Dynamics predicts.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 08-Nov-2019 World View: Regeracy vs Start of War

Code:

|-----------------------------------------|-------|......|
|                                         |       | War  |
|                                        4T   Regeneracy Climax2
| Recovery    Awakening       Unraveling  |     Crisis   |
Climax1                               Climax1+58       Climax1+80?
1945                                    2003            2025?

(11-08-2019, 12:12 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > This graph seems to imply that the fourth turning necessarily
> begins at a 58 year echo. Is that what you mean to say, including
> the implication that the timing between the end of a cycle and the
> beginning of the next crisis period is exact?

Yes, the Fourth Turning begins exactly 58 years after the climax of
the preceding crisis war. This is not event-driven. It's purely
based on generational changes. I arrived at the number 58 based on
many examples in the last 15 years.

By contrast, the Regeneracy is an event, and can occur at any time.

Here's a table that I've posted before, based on a crisis war climax
year YYYY:

Code:

Eras:
YYYY+00 to YYYY+18: Recovery era
YYYY+19 to YYYY+38: Awakening era
YYYY+39 to YYYY+58: Unraveling era
YYYY+59 to YYYY+78: Crisis era
YYYY+79 ..........: Fifth Turning

Code:

Birth years of generations:
YYYY-04 to YYYY+14: Prophets
YYYY+15 to YYYY+34: Nomads
YYYY+35 to YYYY+54: Heroes
YYYY+55 to YYYY+74: Artists

(11-08-2019, 12:12 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > Also, it seems to imply that the regeneracy and the beginning of
> the crisis war are the same event; is that what you mean?

> I'm not arguing for or against at the moment; I'm just trying to
> get more clarification on what you're saying Generational Dynamics
> predicts.

Well, the "start of a war" is more a political decision than anything
else. When did World War II start? Here are some choices:

• US destroyed Japan's silk industry with Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in
  1930
  
• Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931
  
• Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935.
  
• Japan invaded China in 1937
  
• Germany invaded Poland in September 1939
  
• Japan abrogated treaty of commerce with the US in January, 1940.
  
• Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy on
  September 27, 1940.
  
• US established embargo on oil and gasoline exports to Japan on
  August 1, 1941.
  
• Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in September 1941

So when did WW II start?

The Regeneracy is a very important date in generational theory, since
it triggers major changes in attitudes and behaviors in the public.
By contrast, the date named as "the start date of the war" is almost
completely irrelevant, and is often not identified until years later.

I often say that the war starts with the regeneracy because it's
convenient to do so, even if it's not always precisely true. However,
I think it is almost always true that when the Regeneracy occurs, the
non-crisis war turns into a full-fledged generational crisis war.

[John J. Xenakis]

Corrected list of choices for start of WW II:

• US destroyed Japan's silk industry with Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in
  1930
  
• Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931
  
• Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935.
  
• Japan invaded China in 1937
  
• Germany invaded Poland in September 1939
  
• Japan abrogated treaty of commerce with the US in January, 1940.
  
• Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy on
  September 27, 1940.
  
• US froze Japanese assets on July 26, 1941.
  
• US established embargo on oil and gasoline exports to Japan on
  August 1, 1941.
  
• Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941

[Warren Dew]

Thanks, John.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on the Russian Federation thread if you have any you'd like to share.

http://generational-theory.com/forum/thread-5721.html

[pbrower2a]

It's the latter part of the 3T that makes the storm of a 4T possible. Consider what goes on in a degeneracy: institutions other than for-profit institutions weaken, with the for-profit institutions tending toward monopoly and brutal methods of command-and-control. Because honest work is severely underpaid, people start finding get-rich-quick schemes all the more attractive. Mass culture gets raw and cynical, and it falls for showy glitz. Enterprise goes from investment to what is for all practical purposes gambling.

The Degeneracy is a time in which people become materialistic in the extreme -- yet fail. Lust for anything rarely gets one what one wants, whether in sex or wealth.

Political life reflects the economic values, and the sort of leadership that people seem to want -- and get -- is weak leadership that encourages people to do exactly what they want, which is to make money and enjoy the results. Such reforms as there are are tax cuts.

Eventually it fails. Speculative booms are get-rich-quick schemes on a grand scale One can tolerate the nastiness of a 3T so long as one expects that easy money is in reach. When that comes to an end, then all Hell breaks loose. Peopel realize that their lives, politics, and culture are all wholly unsatisfying. In a romance it is perhaps like finding that the Big Spender is bankrupt, perhaps kiting checks to create the illusion of solidity.

[Hintergrund]

Problems began earlier, in the 2T. They were just of a different kind.

Unity was broken; the Heroes dared too much and failed (for the first time); they also didn't suppress the idiocies of the younger generations; and Nomads got a shitty childhood.

Taken together, we now have about 50 years during when politicians rarely achieved something. A turnaround is about ten years due. Let's hope we don't miss it.

[Warren Dew]

(11-11-2019, 01:34 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: It's the latter part of the 3T that makes the storm of a 4T possible. Consider what goes on in a degeneracy: institutions other than for-profit institutions weaken, with the for-profit institutions tending toward monopoly and brutal methods of command-and-control. Because honest work is severely underpaid, people start finding get-rich-quick schemes all the more attractive. Mass culture gets raw and cynical, and it falls for showy glitz. Enterprise goes from investment to what is for all practical purposes gambling.

The Degeneracy is a time in which people become materialistic in the extreme -- yet fail. Lust for anything rarely gets one what one wants, whether in sex or wealth.

Your personal experience in the regeneracy may be failure, but that doesn't mean everyone fails.  Most people do just fine.

The only accurate point in your post is that the issue is tendency toward monopoly and centralized control, and that doesn't happen until the crisis era.

Quote:Hintergrund

Problems began earlier, in the 2T. They were just of a different kind.

That's true too; for example, real wages flatlined in the early 1970s while productivity continued growing, albeit slower for a decade or two.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 10-Nov-2019 World View: Hyperinflation

vincecate Wrote:> Do you think the Fed can print as much as they want without risk
> of hyperinflation?

> The US government budget is around $4 trillion per year. If the
> Fed prints $1 trillion every year you think it would be fine?

Yes and yes. I've told you a million times.

Do you recognize the irony that you've been saying exactly the
same thing, using the same words, for 15 years, changing only the
numbers each year? And still there's no hyperinflation, and barely
any inflation at all.

vincecate Wrote:> I expect this "Not QE" to print more than $1 trillion in 12
> months. What about $2 trillion, or $3 or $4 trillion per year? If
> there is no big risk from printing money, should the US just do
> away with taxes?

> The numbers are bigger for the USA than Argentina or Venezuela,
> with the US being a reserve currency for the world, maybe even as
> different as a bathtub and a swimming pool, but it is not as
> different as a bathtub and the ocean. I do expect the phenomenon
> to work the same way, just on a bigger scale.

No, it's an ocean, not just a swimming pool.

Back in 2008, I was writing a lot about the global debt bubble. As I
wrote at the time, the Bank of International Settlements said that
there are over $1 quadrillion ($1,000 trillion) worth of credit
derivatives and other structured finance securities in the portfolios
of financial institutions around the world.

Money created through debt is just as real as the money "printed" by
the US government. If your $50K home increases in value during a real
estate bubble to $500K, and you borrow $400K against your home, then
you can spend that money on cars, groceries, sex, or whatever you
want. It's the same money.

So the debt bubble injected over $1 quadrillion of money into the
global economy without causing inflation. And you're telling me that
that if the Fed does $4 trillion in QE, it will cause hyperinflation?
Bullsh-t.

Really, this is the same argument we were having ten years ago.
There's not gonna be any hyperinflation. Period.

vincecate Wrote:> Even Krugman, who very much likes money printing (nobody would
> call him a Gold Bug) thinks the USA could only get away with a few
> percent of money printing per year without inflation spiraling out
> of control.

> https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/0...DbMzpgAg8k

Krugman's an idiot. He got the Nobel prize because he hated Bush.

There's a good point to be made here. Most economists are idiots,
whether on the right or the left. The only reasons their forecasts
are ever right is because they make the same forecasts every year, and
that's right most of the time. But if something unusual happens they
don't have the vaguest clue.

"There were two economists who were shipwrecked on a desert
island. They had no money but over the next three years, they made
millions of dollars selling their hats to each other."

So listen to Krugman if you'd like. Or dump a bowl of oatmeal on your
head. They're roughly equivalent.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 10-Nov-2019 World View: Neil Howe and war with China

Higgenbotham Wrote:> Neil Howe is asked point blank whether he thinks we are going to
> war with China.

> https://youtu.be/HWVj970xB5o?t=1975

Lol! That was a pretty wishy-washy answer, wasn't it.

Neil Howe and his spokesman David Kaiser have almost completely given
up the TFT theory, because they've turned it into a vehicle for
Democratic party politics.

The original theory was non-ideological, and made it clear that there
would be a major war between 2005 and 2025. But they gave that up
during the Bush administration, because it would support the NeoCons.

Then they decided that the Fourth Turning crisis would not be a war,
but would be the major social changes brought about by Barack Obama's
policies, turning America into a social Nirvana.

That they could even believe something so ridiculous as that shows
that neither of them have the vaguest clue how their own theory works.
It seems that the only one who understood the original theory was Bill
Strauss, but he's dead.

Now in the Trump administration, they're faced with the horrifying
reality that we're headed for war with China but, like most people on
the left, they'd rather think about impeachment or socialism. The
nightmare scenario for them, the worst nightmare in the world, is that
Trump would lead America through WW III, making Trump a historic hero,
one of the great presidents, like Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.
That's too terrible for them even to think about it.

So that explains Howe's conflicted answer in the youtube video.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 10-Nov-2019 World View: Cuban Missile Crisis

John Wrote:> ** 07-Nov-2019 58 years vs 80 years

> The 58 Year Hypothesis applies to any situation where a
> catastrophic event occurs that affects the entire
> population.

Higgenbotham Wrote:> What will happen 58 years from the Cuban Missile Crisis?

The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic killed tens of millions of people. The
1929 stock market panic sent tens of millions of people into poverty.
The 1945 nuking of Japan killed millions of people.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was an overnight political event. It was in
no way a catastrophic event.