Generational Dynamics World View - Printable Version +- Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory (http://generational-theory.com/forum) +-- Forum: Fourth Turning Forums (http://generational-theory.com/forum/forum-1.html) +--- Forum: Theories Of History (http://generational-theory.com/forum/forum-7.html) +--- Thread: Generational Dynamics World View (/thread-51.html) Pages:
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RE: Generational Dynamics World View - pbrower2a - 02-01-2020 Here we go: For those who despair of the offensive, catastrophic Presidency of Donald Trump, this gives hope. https://medium.com/@mishaley/how-history-predicts-the-2020-election-and-the-next-40-years-1904e6ac19bd I see Donald Trump as Jimmy Carter without the intelligence, integrity, moral compass, and personal decency: without those, Jimmy Carter would have been an unspeakable nightmare as President. Maybe it is not comfortable to compare Barack Obama to Richard Nixon; if anything I would more likely compare him to Dwight Eisenhower for being similar in temperament and style and having squeaky-clean administrations. Obama proves to have been more of a hawk than Eisenhower -- then again, Osama bin Laden was still an infant when "the torch has been passed to a new generation". It could be the difference between a Civic type who thought wrongly that he could get away with almost anything (Nixon) as long as he got the desired results and a mature Reactive (Obama) who knew that he could get away with practically nothing -- as House and in turn Senate majorities for the other, increasingly-authoritarian Party made clear. That is a generational difference. Going back to the establishment of the Constitutional union: The Founding era may be unclear, but it is safe to say that (1) each political era ranges from 32 to 48 years (2) of them make a generational cycle out of Howe and Strauss (3) each political era begins with either great promise (Awakening era) or great threat (Crisis era) (4) the last leader of the era is a tired or pathological expression of what started the era. So Washington establishes the norms of the Republic and John Quincy Adams is as far as it can go before a populist, Jacksonian era that never tolerates a meaningful challenge to the cancer of chattel slavery. Jackson was a colorful populist and James Buchanan tried to keep the Republic from (imploding? exploding?) by appeasing the slave interests (Hey, Northerners -- you can keep your liberal ideas, but you must enforce the reality of slavery by arresting fugitive slaves!) Lincoln won the Civil War and restored the Union by treating the defeated South in as kindly a way as possible; the industrial basis that gave the North a compelling edge in the Civil War fostered the rise of Gilded Age plutocrats who fostered economic and technological progress that those plutocrats arrogated for themselves in a winner-take-all system. By the time of Teddy Roosevelt, America needed to drop its social myopia and its tolerance for bad business (child labor, horrible patent medicines, free-for-all for polluters)... and got the change. Had TR not done that, then maybe Taft would. Theodore Roosevelt's modest reforms petered out with the return of politics of the disastrous Harding-Coolidge-Hoover return to a "New Era" best compared to another Gilded Age with a bit more gilding. That Little Gilded Age ended with something commonplace in the Gilded Age -- a speculative boom that led to the very nasty economic meltdown that always ensues. (Paradoxically FDR took much from the Progressive Era and enhanced it, so he may be more a throwback to Theodore Roosevelt than to Woodrow Wilson... but that is practically a quibble. The oddity about Nixon seemed that he was more a throwback to Teddy Roosevelt in his agenda than to Gilded Age or New Gilded Age politics. Reagan started America in earnest into the neoliberal ethos in which enrichment of economic elites would become the sole economic purpose while deprecation of the intellect (OK, "Bright Boy" Carter couldn't solve everything, so if people want to believe in young-earth creationism, snake-handling, "Flood geology", and a mythological history of America such as that the Founding Fathers were closet Fundamentalists even if the word Fundamentalism did not appear in the lexicon until 1926 and that the Founding Fathers were often best described as Deists) -- fine. If one wanted to be a dolt in the Individualist Era, then such was as much an expression of individualism as was indulging oneself like an aristocrat on executive compensation... or having a huge audio-video collection. If Dubya seems like a telescoping of the three awful Presidencies of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover into eight years with a costly and inconclusive war thrown in, and Obama seems to have tried to be another FDR... Trump is beyond any question a moral and political disaster. Trump is Ronald Reagan (even down to possible senility) with far more personal cruelty, less regard for legal niceties, more contempt for learning and expertise, and no loyalty except to his own self esteem. Trump has been appeasing some nasty dictators overseas much as Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan appeased the slave-owning planters; I do not see that going well. With the exception of McKinley (who came close to being a one-term President, if through assassination instead of electoral defeat), the last Presidents in these cycles are one-term Presidents, Presidents associated with something tired (J Q Adams, Carter), unworkable (Buchanan, Hoover) or corrupt (Trump). Corruption and incompetence on the scale of Donald Trump is rare at the federal level in America; even at the state level it is not good for staying in office. We have no precedent for Trump for his scale of corruption, cruelty, and incompetence. Maybe I lack the imagination to see how Trump can redeem himself and establish himself as a pattern for the next forty or so years... but it is now about time for a President who can break some of the objectionable patterns of American life, make life good for more Americans, and create a consensus that completely repudiates what the Individualist Era became -- starting with a flawed, if transformational President and ending with a sick parody of the transformational President of the era. America will want an antithesis of Trump very soon if not already. The generational constellation is ill suited for any maintenance of exploitative individualism of the Trump style. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 02-01-2020 ** 01-Feb-2020 World View: Education richard5za Wrote:> Very interesting perspective, John. Thank you for the detailed Unfortunately, education has nothing to do with it. If Rwanda had better schools, would the Hutus have killed fewer Tutsis? Bashar al-Assad was educated in London and became an ophthalmologist. Vladimir Putin is highly educated. And yet they're both committing genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Arab Sunnis in Syria. Aung San Suu Kyi is well-educated and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. And yet, she's overseeing the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas. Xi Jinping and, in fact, most Chinese people are well-educated. But they're still arresting, enslaving and killing Muslim Uighurs and Kazakhs. In addition, Buddhists and Christians are also beaten, jailed and tortured if they claim to worship anyone but Xi Jinping. You'd think that was a joke, but it's not a joke. And today's Democrats are well-educated, but they're on the same path anyway. Democrats have turned into crazed lunatics, on the one hand demanding a suicidal Socialist agenda, and on the other hand totally psychopathicly obsessed with hatred for Trump supporters. And we haven't yet seen the worst of it. So, unfortunately, being well-educated has nothing to do with it, except that when you're well-educated then you know more ways to torture and kill people, and you're more intellectually vacuous ways of justifying your torture and killing. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - pbrower2a - 02-01-2020 A brilliant, highly-educated person with sociopathic tendencies, like Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini, or Joseph Goebbels, is far more dangerous than a dumb sociopath who 'only' does dumb crime such as auto theft or armed robbery. The dumb crook usually gets caught faster. A sociopath who has all the advantages of wealth, connections, and power -- let us say Harvey Weinstein -- can do far greater crime than someone not so privileged. Intelligence, education, and connections do not make one safer if one is evil. Perhaps those might give one cause to be honest because the rewards for legitimate achievement can be high. Then again, there is Bill Cosby, who couldn't pass up the opportunity to do date rape. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 02-02-2020 *** 2-Feb-20 World View -- Wuhan coronavirus hits China's economy hard, threatens world economy This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
**** **** Investors nervous as China's stock market to reopen on Monday **** New York's annual Lunar New Year parade on January 25 (Getty) Investors are nervously waiting to see what will happen on Monday, when China's stock market reopens for the first time since the beginning of the Lunar New Year celebrations. It closed down 3.1% on January 23, and has been closed since then. It was supposed to open last week on Thursday, but the opening was postponed until February 3 because of the Wuhan coronavirus crisis. Taiwan's stock exchange did open on Thursday, and fell nearly 6%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng stock market index also fell nearly 6%. Worldwide there have been 14,000 confirmed cases, with 304 deaths. That means that 2.1% of confirmed Wuhan coronavirus cases are ending in death. Deaths from ordinary influenza are closer to 0.1%. Not that there's been much of a Lunar New Year celebration this year. Coronavirus is now present in every province of China. China’s economy seems to be grinding to a halt. Sixteen cities in China, with a combined population of more than 50 million people, are on lockdown, and people are prevented from leaving. Shops and restaurants in many cities are completely deserted, as people are afraid to leave their homes. The only exception seems to be long lines where people camp out for hours to puchase protective face masks. They've been sold out everywhere, but Chinese officials have announced that prisoners are working day and night to make millions more face masks. Tourism will be hit hard. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the Philippines have stopped accepting visitors from China’s Hubei province, and Russia and Mongolia have closed their borders with China. Many countries are imposing travel bans from China. On Saturday, Australia and the United States joined Israel, Vietnam, Italy, Philippines and Qatar to suspend flights from China. In the United States, the government has put about 200 US citizens repatriated from Wuhan under legal quarantine at March Air Reserve Base in Southern California. The group includes State Department personnel, family members, children and other Americans. It’s the first time such a policy has been used in the US since the 1960s, when a quarantine order was issued to stop the spread of smallpox. **** **** Dangers of social unrest in China **** The coronavirus crisis could cost China's economy $60 billion this quarter. There were already millions of people unemployed, and the coronavirus has forced many small businesses to close. Many economists are concerned about massive layoffs in March, because of loss of revenue in January and February, caused by a combination of the Lunar New Year holiday and coronavirus. Many businesses and factories have had to close temporarily to prevent further spread of the disease. Where possible, people are being ordered to work at home, but for many that will not be possible. As long as the number of new cases increases every day, then the end is not in sight. When the number of new cases peaks and starts to decrease, that will signal the beginning of the end of the pandemic. That's likely to occur as winter ends, around May or June in the northern hemisphere. It may strike the southern hemisphere after that. Officials in China are hoping that the things will start to return to "normal" by March 1, but there's a possibility that nothing will change for two or three additional months. This is exactly the kind of potential social unrest situation that the paranoid Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thugs fear the most. Most ordinary Chinese know that the CCP thugs are corrupt, incompetent, and violent, but there's a kind of contract between them. The people will keep quiet as long as there's plenty of employment and the livin' is easy. When that deal begins to fall apart, a full-scale rebellion becomes a possibility. As I've written in the past, Hong Kong is on the fault line between northern and southern China. ( "22-Jun-19 World View -- Hong Kong protests show historic split between northern and southern China" ) Southeast China was the starting point of the last two massive Chinese anti-government rebellions. Mao Zedong's Long March that led to the Communist revolution civil war (1934-49) started in the south. The massive Taiping Rebellion (1852-64), which was led by a Christian convert who believed he was the son of God and the younger brother of Jesus, began in the south and spread north. The ethnic fault line between north and south is just as active today as it ever was, and China is overdue for a new north-south rebellion. So there's already massive unrest in Hong Kong, and now the country is on the verge of large-scale unemployment. China has had massive anti-government rebellions at regular intervales for millennia. It's now been 71 years since the end of the last rebellion, and so China is overdue for its next rebellion. The CCP thugs are aware of this, and so the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the country's central bank, has promised to flood the financial markets with liquidity, and to increase spending in whatever sectors it can. Whether that will work remains to be seen. China spent huge amounts of money to weather the financial crisis of ten years ago. China has been spending massive amounts of money in many countries with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Even China has some limits on the amount of money it can spend. **** **** Effects of Wuhan coronavirus on global stock markets **** There's been a discussion in the Generational Dynamics forum in the last few days about whether this will be the trigger for a global financial crisis and stock market crash, since Wall Street stocks are in a huge bubble, bigger than 1929. My response is that I don't think so. If you look back at previous panics -- the 1929 panic, the 1987 false panic, and the flash crash of a few years ago -- they were all completely unexpected. In other words, you can't "expect" a panic. A panic is, almost by definition, "unexpectable." Therefore, if a panic is now "expected," then it can't occur now. So there might be a 20% stock market correction, but not a full-scale financial panic. However, another person has pointed out a flaw in my logic. Since the panic is "expected," then it can't happen. Therefore, it's "unexpected." Therefore it can happen. See how easy it is to tie yourself up in knots? At any rate, people investing in the stock market should be very cautious these days. The stock market is in the biggest bubble in world history, and so really anything can happen. John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/ Sources:
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KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, Wuhan, Hubei, Coronavirus, Lunar New Year, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Hang Seng, Russia, Mongolia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Israel, Italy, Taiping Rebellion, White Lotus Rebellion, Mao Zedong, Long March, Communist Revolution Permanent web link to this article Receive daily World View columns by e-mail Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal John J. Xenakis 100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A Cambridge, MA 02142 Phone: 617-864-0010 E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 02-02-2020 ** 02-Feb-2020 World View: Velocity of Money I had an e-mail discussion with someone who is predicting inflation from the coronavirus problem. I pointed out that people have been predicting hyperinflation for 20 years, and it never happens because of plummeting velocity of money that economists are too stupid to understand. I pointed him to the St Louis Fed graph that I set up several years ago on the St Louis Fed web site: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?category_id=&graph_id=366117 The issue is that it's Macroeconomics 1.01 that inflation is almost impossible while velocity of money is falling, because the inflation rate is proportional to the velocity of money. So this morning I was browsing some other St. Louis Fed pages, and I came across the following: Quote:> M2 velocity and inflation The blog goes on analyze the situation and to find that these "arguments" turn out to be wrong. This is why I call economists stupid. Of course, he has it backwards -- if velocity is low, then inflation must be low. What's really incredible is that this blog post appeared almost six years ago, and it's still there! Is there nobody at the St. Louis Fed who even understands what the velocity of money is, and what its significance is? Well, I did find another blog post that appeared about a week later. It gives the actual formula and what it means: Quote:> What Does Money Velocity Tell Us about Low Inflation in the U.S.? I don't know if this was meant as a correction to the previous blog post, but they appeared on different blogs, so it's possible they weren't. The graph that I created on the St Louis web site (URL shown above) several years ago, pastes together two different series, one for old data and one for new data. The graph also updates itself automatically as time goes on. Here's the screen shot that I posted in 2017:
The annotations are, of course, mine. I keep pointing out that most people today are unable to understand computations using fourth-grade percentages, and that's why they're completely baffled by what's happening in Iran. So now it's apparent that economists don't understand elementary things like the velocity of money. This is what happens when SAT scores have been falling for decades, and colleges today teach nothing but women's studies and sociology. This ties in with the idiotic Socialist proposals being made today. The proposals are being made by people too stupid to understand even second grade math, and the so-called "experts" who describe them didn't actually learn economics, but are taught from the Marx's Capitalist Manifesto, which is completely useless except to make Socialism proposals to idiots. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Warren Dew - 02-02-2020 (02-02-2020, 12:17 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: I keep pointing out that most people today are unable to understand And now there is pressure for affirmative action at the Fed, to reduce their math knowledge from a 3rd grade level to a 1st grade level. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 02-02-2020 ** 02-Feb-2020 World View: China's stock market opens The Shanghai and Shenzen stock markets just opened a few minutes ago for the first time since they were closed on January 23 for the Lunar New Year celebrations, and then for the Wuhan coronavirus crisis. Chinese stock markets fell 9% at the open, but then rebounded to 8% down. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 02-03-2020 ** 03-Feb-2020 World View: Wuhan coronavirus story in the news I've watched three different networks this morning, and here's what I saw:
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - David Horn - 02-03-2020 (02-03-2020, 10:22 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 03-Feb-2020 World View: Wuhan coronavirus story in the news Forget Fox Business Network, and tell me what was playing on the Fox Network: do you what Fox and Friends?. Of course the business networks focused on business issues. The political networks focus on politics. I assume their viewers expect that in both cases. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - David Horn - 02-03-2020 (02-02-2020, 12:17 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 02-Feb-2020 World View: Velocity of Money You miss the point on velocity of money. There are only two reason for that: declining demand and excessive money in circulation. So which is it? For my money (pun intended) the general lack of business investment is piled on top of huge deficits created by the Orange One and his minions. No need to invest when the money just stays in your pocket. That's not important to the Global Supply Chain (GSC). Now what happens if the GSC is disrupted? It's not a financial instrument or the product of one for that matter. It operates on supply and demand, just like the economy used to before financializaton. What happens if finished goods become hard-to-get? After all, the GSC tends to be intermediate goods, as a whole, and when the lack of widgets to build things dries up, demand will pressure those finished goods suppliers to find new sources, and bid up the price of what's still there. I don't think we know how messy that will be, unless it actually happens. We've never had the GSC so dispersed and tied to just-in-time delivery. Everey crsis is new, and "unexpected" until it happens. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 02-04-2020 *** 4-Feb-20 World View -- China's Foreign Ministry blames America for coronavirus 'panic' This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
**** **** China's Foreign Ministry blames America for coronavirus 'panic' **** China's premier Li Keqiang, wearing a green medical mask, meets hospital workers in Wuhan on January 29 (AP) China's official figures are that there are more than 20,000 confirmed cases of Wuhan coronavirus, and 426 deaths (2.1%). Many people believe that those figures are low, that there are already tens or hundreds of thousands of cases, many of them in rural areas where they wouldn't be found, and some of them mild enough so that the patient did not see any need to report it. If there are thousands more cases, then the death rate will probably be lower than 2.1%. 50 million people are on lockdown, and are forebidden from leaving their villages. 24 provinces and cities are on lockdown or near lockdown (Anhui, Chongqing, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hebei, Heilonjiang, Henan, Hunan, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanghai, Shanxi, Suzhou, Xi'an). Factories in those provinces are being told not to restart operations until at least February 10. So half of China is shut down, with more than 80% of national GDP and 90% of exports. One factory owner in Shandong said that he won't be allowed to open unless he has a stock of two face masks for each worker every day. He has 1,500 employees, so that's a lot of face masks. So one might say that China is in a panic. Nonetheless, they're refusing to permit American CDC officials to visit Wuhan to help out, and they're refusing to allow the US to fly Americans in Wuhan back to America. China is being congratulated by many international officials for taking the harsh steps necessary to stop the threat of the virus spreading further. But on Monday, China became harshly critical of the United States for imposing some travel restrictions on people traveling to the US from China. So China's foreign ministry spokesman on Monday said: <QUOTE>"But as far as I know, the US government has not provided any substantive help to the Chinese side yet. On the contrary, it was the first to withdraw its consulate staff from Wuhan, the first to suggest the partial withdrawal of embassy staff, the first to announce a ban on entry by Chinese citizens after the WHO made it clear that it doesn't recommend and even opposes travel and trade restrictions against China. What the US has done could create and spread panic. ... [[Question]]: You just severely criticized the US government response to the outbreak. We understand the second US flight is experiencing delay - is it due to the lack of Chinese government authorization as some say? As I just said, the US was the first to evacuate its consulate staff in Wuhan via charter flight. Further arrangements need to be coordinated based on a variety of factors including Wuhan airport capacity to receive supplies."<END QUOTE> So China has taken its own draconian measures to prevent the spread of the virus, but when the US and other countries do it, it causes panic. The above statement could definitely be seen as a threat. China has a standard playbook of reacting to a disliked policy of another country by jailing citizens of that country for weeks or months without charges. The statement seems to be demanding "substantive help" in return for allowing American embassy personnel to leave Wuhan. No one who follows the news from China on a regular basis can have any doubt that this kind of extortion by the CCP thugs is a real possibility. China is blocking access from US CDC officials who want to help, and so it's not known what "substantive help" China is demanding. **** **** Social unrest in China **** When China's government says that the US is causing fear and panic what's the purpose of that message? I doubt that any American care at all what that latest name-calling China is directing at America this week. So what's the point? The fear and panic messages are directed at Chinese people, many of whom are now blaming Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for mishandling the crisis. Concern is growing among the CCP thugs that the Wuhan coronavirus health crisis could lead to enough social unrest to threaten the CCP itself. At the very least, the crisis is the greatest political challenge that Xi Jinping has faced since he took power in 2012. There's a certain irrestible irony about this. Xi Jinping has for years tried to protect himself by ordering an increasingly brutal and violent crackdown on peaceful protesters, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and Hong Kong activists, and now is facing a threat -- Wuhan coronovirus -- that he can't control with his usual arsenal of beatings, torture, rape and jailings. That fact alone should provide some moral lessons to the dictator in fear of losing the Mandate from Heaven. Food prices are soaring in Wuhan, and pictures on social media show empty shelves in supermarkets. Restrictions on transport are hindering efforts to bring food and medicines into Wuhan, and as popular discontent increases, CCP officials are desperately trying to find the source of the photos of empty supermarket shelves. The city of Wuhan has a population of 11 million, but as the virus spread, millions of people fled the city before it was finally locke down on January 24. Outside Wuhan, people from Wuhan are being told that they're not welcome, and they're being barred from entering other cities. Some places are refusing entry to cars from Hubei Province, where Wuhan is located, and gas stations are refusing to fuel cars with Wuhan license plates, while hotels are refusing to accommodate guests from Hubei. The threat of social unrest goes outside the borders of China. Already there are reports that Chinese people in public are being targeted with insults in some countries, because of increased xenophobia caused by potential spread of coronavirus. If coronavirus spreads to other countries, it could lead to social unrest in countries, such as those with projects in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), where enclaves of Chinese cities have to coexist with locals. **** **** The Timeline for the coming months **** It's clear from listening to analysts and experts that, at this time, no one knows how long this crisis will continue, or whether it will metastasize into a larger worldwise pandemic. Those who hope that the worst will be over by March 1 are probably dreaming or lying, but at least it is possible that by March 1 we'll have answers to some important questions. First, there have been no major outbreaks of the disease outside of China. Most cases have been in people who had just returned from a trip to China, rather than in someone who was affected by another person outside of China. So by March 1, we should know whether there are going to be outbreaks in any other countries. This depends on a question that is still largely unanswered: How easily can the disease pass from person to person? The crucial question, still unanswered, is whether a person who has not yet shown symptoms infect another person. If a person has to show symptoms before he can infect another person, then it should be possible to limit the spread in most countries. Standard techniques of quaranteeing people with symptoms and using contact tracing to find other possible cases should be effective. However, if a person can infect another person without showing symptoms, then these standard techniques won't work. By March 1, we should know the answer to this question. Either way, the best outcomes should be possible in America, the West, and other developed countries. Underdeveloped countries in Africa, and elsewhere probably don't have the medical infrastructure and resources to contain an outbreak. The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been ongoing for months, and has been mostly contained only with the help of a massive international effort. If there are multiple outbreaks of coronavirus in multiple countries, the resources to control them will not be available. A related subject is that the Ebola breakout in eastern DRC is being contained with the help of millions of doses of a vaccine for Ebola that has recently been developed. Several companies are working on a vaccine for Wuhan coronavirus, but development, testing and production of such a vaccine will require over a year. Globally, there are about 2,000 new cases of Wuhan coronavirus every day. That number has not yet shown any sign of peaking and falling, at this time. By March 1, it will hopefully have begun to do so. So we should know by March 1 whether that is happening. Some analysts are saying that we should know within a week or two. Chinese cities with large outbreaks were locked down on January 24, and there is a two-week incubation period. Therefore, according to this reasoning, within the next week or two the number of new cases should start falling. We shall see. Another thing that we don't know is whether the virus can spread easily only in winter, and will be blocked by warm summer weather. If so, then the pandemic should be over by May or June, although it may reappear in the southern hemisphere after that. **** **** The 'Black Swan' events after the Wuhan coronavirus **** The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic in China is being called a "Black Swan" event because it was completely unexpected and unplanned, and because it could have devastating consequences. It mean lead to other "Black Swan" events. First, China's economy is being devastated, and the effects are overflowing into all the countries in the region. China is injecting $713 billion of money into China's economy in the hope of preventing the worst. However, with so much debt in China and beyond, it's possible that missed payments in China and region will force businesses into bankruptcy, resulting in a chain reaction of missed payments and missed deadlines, and a global financial crisis. That's one additional "Black Swan" possibility. Second, China's social fabric is extremely fragile, and the number of anti-government protests has been growing for years. As I've written in the past, China's history is filled with anti-government rebellions and coups that have occurred with regularity for millennia. The last two massive rebellions began in China's south, near Hong Kong. Mao Zedong's Long March that led to the Communist revolution civil war (1934-49) started in the south. The massive Taiping Rebellion (1852-64), which was led by a Christian convert who believed he was the son of God and the younger brother of Jesus, began in the south and spread north. It's now been 71 years since the end of the last rebellion, and so China is overdue for its next rebellion, and that would be another possible "Black Swan." To prevent this, the CCP is mounting a campaign of blaming the United States. Most Chinese people know that the CCP is corrupt and full of crap, so this is unlikely to work. John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/ Sources:
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KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, Wuhan, coronavirus, Anhui, Chongqing, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hebei, Heilonjiang, Henan, Hunan, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanghai, Shanxi, Suzhou, Xi'an, Xi Jinping, Ebola, Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, Black Swan, Taiping, Communist Revolution Permanent web link to this article Receive daily World View columns by e-mail Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal John J. Xenakis 100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A Cambridge, MA 02142 Phone: 617-864-0010 E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 02-04-2020 ** 04-Feb-2020 World View: Asia's economic outlook Tiger Wrote:> Asia here. Again. The weekend saw a collapse in local business, You wrote this on Sunday. Two days have passed since then. Do things look any different today? Are restaurants starting to fill up again? Are people beginning to shop again? Or are things getting worse and worse? RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 02-04-2020 ** 04-Feb-2020 World View: Intensive care for Wuhan coronavirus Tom Mazanec Wrote:> John, the current death rate may be 2.1%, but if this does richard5za Wrote:> I did some more research. Dead is only 2% of total infections, but This is an important point that I've been ignoring. The death rate for people who contract the virus is being estimated at around 2.1%. However, another 15-20% become very ill and survive only because because they've received intensive medical care in a hospital. That's why China has been building "pop-up hospitals" in Hubei province, each one capable of housing 1,000 patients. These "pop-up hospitals" are a very interesting development. The Chinese developed this technology as part of "lessons learned" from the SARS crisis in China in 2002-2003. The Chinese are staffing them with military medics. I believe that three of these hospitals have been built, as each one can be built within a week. In the months to come, there should be some reports on how well they worked. However, the obvious point is that no such "pop-up hospitals" are possible outside of China. And so if there are outbreaks in other countries, there will not be enough hospital space, the the death rate may go much higher than 2.1%. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Warren Dew - 02-04-2020 (02-04-2020, 11:36 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: The death rate for people who contract the virus is being estimated at On the flip side, those are percentages of the people who get sick enough that they go to the hospital for it and have the virus confirmed. We have little data on how many people get the disease but never go to the hospital and are never confirmed as cases. By the end of March we should have better information on that. Ironically, if the average case is mild, we should expect continued exponential growth in numbers infected and dying for a few weeks, since there will be a lot of infection outside of the hospitals. If most cases get hospitalized, we should expect slow growth of the numbers infected, since there will be a lot fewer "carriers" "in the wild", so to speak. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 02-04-2020 ** 04-Feb-2020 World View: Exponential growth of new Wuhan coronavirus cases This graph exhibits exponential growth:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/03/cdc-wuhan-coronavirus-110550 As I've been writing in my articles, we should know by March 1 whether this rate of growth will continue, or whether it will level off. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - David Horn - 02-04-2020 (02-04-2020, 02:15 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 04-Feb-2020 World View: Exponential growth of new Wuhan coronavirus cases I'm betting on a continuation that slowly, and I do mean slowly, subsides from the exponential model. Too many left Wuhan before the crackdown before containment, and nothing indicates that a vaccine is in the offing. Other than heightened awareness, nothing is likely to keep this in check inside China. The rest of the world should be locked-down a lot sooner, so your March 1st date may apply to not-China, though, due to proximity, a few other nearby smaller nations may get dragged along with the PRC. This will not disappear from the radar soon. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Warren Dew - 02-04-2020 (02-04-2020, 02:15 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Very interesting graph, John. The doubling time is under 2 days until January 29, at which point the graph starts dropping away from exponential growth. You may be interested in this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-says-10-people-on-cruise-ship-have-tested-positive-for-coronavirus-11580868512?mod=hp_listb_pos1 A man from Hong Kong had the coronavirus and was aboard a cruise ship with 3700 people. 273 people on the ship who had fevers or close contact with the infected man were tested. 31 tests have come back so far, and 10 of them are positive. With the ship being quarantined now, I'm not sure whether I should expect 100 our of the 273 people eventually to test positive, or 1000 out of the 3700, or maybe all 3700. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 02-05-2020 ** 05-Feb-2020 World View: Coronavirus slowing? (02-04-2020, 11:44 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: That may be true, and if the growth is slowing, it would be a big relief to everyone. Just keep in mind that a lot of people believe that the Chinese are hiding cases, so we really won't know for a couple of weeks. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 02-05-2020 ** 05-Feb-2020 World View: Fox News vs mainstream media (02-03-2020, 12:39 PM)David Horn Wrote: > Forget Fox Business Network, and tell me what was playing on the Sorry, I can't tell you that since I don't watch Fox and Friends. I'm interested in news, not in fatuous political nonsense. There was a time when I watched CNN almost 24 hours a day, but that was before they turned into a sewer. I try to watch MS-NBC for a while every day. NBC News used to be a legitimate news operation, and there are still occasional remnants of it on MS-NBC. I make a point of watching Hallie Jackson at 10 am ET. I've found that her show is 75% fatuous nonsense and 25% news, and I watch it for the 25% news. This discussion gives me an opportunity to repeat and update stuff I've written before about Fox News vs the mainstream media. I've been following this issue off and on since around 2005. As I've written in the past:
That's why Fox News consistently gets around 50% of the audience, while all the other stations compete for the other 50%. Furthermore, since Fox has no effective competition, it can afford to be "fair and balanced," while all the others have to compete with one another to be as loony left as possible. So Fox News channel is definitely right of center, but also has any number of regular moderate left-wing commentators, including Mara Liasson, Juan Williams, Donna Brazile and Mary Harf. If all you watch is CNN and MS-NBC, then you're only hearing the loony news, and you owe it to your own intellectual honesty to balance it in some way. There are two shows that you might consider. The best general newscast on tv today is the 6-7pm newscast on FNC, currently called "Special Report With Bret Baier." Both Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum (who comes on at 7 pm) are right of center, but give a great deal of time to "fair and balanced coverage" of Democrats. The best hard news analysis show is Hannity at 9 pm. Noone would ever call Hannity "balanced." He is definitely right of center. But he's very much highly analytical and not loony right. (I would say that Tucker Carlson, at 8 pm ET, is loony right.) I started watching Hannity regularly around a year or two ago as counterweights to the daily nonsense from Adam Schiff and others who made one "explosive" revelation after another, every day, and every single one turned out to be a lie and a fabrication. The Mueller report eventually proved that Schiff's "explosive" revelations were all lies, but Hannity showed the same thing every day. A good example of Hannity's show is that he frequently had reports from John Solomon at The Hill. Solomon actually went to Ukraine and got the proof of Schiff's daily lies, reporting on what was really going on with Burisma and Ukraine's politics. Solomon himself began getting attacked by the left-wing media because he was too effective, and was forcing Schiff to change his story. It was really an amazing situation. So you have a choice. If you want to just believe Schiff's crap, then just listen to CNN and MS-NBC and revel in the sewer. If you'd like to see the counter-analysis, and find out what's really going on, the only place you can get it every day is Hannity. Quote:> "Fox News Channel Dominates Weekly Cable Ratings Charts RE: Generational Dynamics World View - David Horn - 02-05-2020 (02-05-2020, 11:36 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 05-Feb-2020 World View: Fox News vs mainstream media We've had a consistent drift to the right for several decades. Using your yardstick, Richard Nixon would be left of center and Eisenhower, actually a liberal. So that begs the question: what qualifies as "the center", when it moves around? Is it a transitory thing? If this era proves more progressive, will the center move to the left and make some of "the liberal mainstream media" centrist again? John Wrote:Furthermore, since Fox has no effective competition, it can afford to be "fair and balanced," while all the others have to compete with one another to be as loony left as possible. Fair and balanced? Really? When the news sources are fact checked, Fox is consistently shown to be extremely biased, to the point that it lies just like Trump. And note, I'm not pointing to things that are conjecture. These are verifiable facts they twist to meet their audience. Regular viewers were rated only slightly better informed than folks who generally ignored the news. John Wrote:So Fox News channel is definitely right of center, but also has any number of regular moderate left-wing commentators, including Mara If you do a quick run-through of MS-NBC, you'll find several former GOP staffers and office holders, like Nicole Wallace and Elise Jordan, to say nothing of Michael Steel. In fact, the list is long. For that matter Joe Scarborough was originally a conservative GOP House member. I doubt Fox has anywhere near the concentration of left-of-center commentators, and zero hosting programs there. In the straight news part of the operation, there actually are. Chris Wallace, though certainly conservative, is one. Sheppard Smith had to leave. He had all he could take. John Wrote:There are two shows that you might consider. Are you serious? I've watched Bret Baier, and he's far from balanced … or fair. I've never watched Martha MacCallum, so I don't know about her. John Wrote:The best hard news analysis show is Hannity at 9 pm. No one would ever call Hannity "balanced." He is definitely right of center. But he's very much highly analytical and not loony right. (I would say that Tucker Carlson, at 8 pm ET, is loony right.) I see you drink your Kool-Aid by the gallon. Hannity is Donald Trump's Joseph Goebbels. What you call nonsense from Adam Schiff is now recognized by GOP Senators as fully valid and accurate. Please, point out any fabrication that can be shown to be one. Generalities don't cut it. John Wrote:A good example of Hannity's show is that he frequently had reports from John Solomon at The Hill. Solomon actually went to Ukraine and got the proof of Schiff's daily lies, reporting on what was really going on with Burisma and Ukraine's politics. Solomon himself began getting attacked by the left-wing media because he was too effective, and was forcing Schiff to change his story. It was really an amazing situation. Citations, please. and include something that verifies your information as true or false, depending on what you claim of course. John Wrote:So you have a choice. If you want to just believe Schiff's crap, then just listen to CNN and MS-NBC and revel in the sewer. If you'd like to see the counter-analysis, and find out what's really going on, the only place you can get it every day is Hannity. John, I'm really worried about you. How can you be that gullible? |