Has the regeneracy arrived?

[TeacherinExile]

(01-03-2017, 08:18 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(12-14-2016, 07:53 PM)Bourbonista Wrote: Hi, new member here, long-time fan of 4T.

I think that the Trump election marks the beginning of the Regeneracy. The fact that most of the “establishment” media and political elites missed the strength of support for Trump among rural white voters and especially among educated suburban voters shows that Trump tapped in to a significant consensus among many Americans that the current system is irreparably broken and they are willing to bet on a crude, misogynistic, self-serving dilettante over any career politician, right or left.
But I don’t think Trump is the Grey Champion. He will precipitate the Crisis – trade war with China, Great Depression II, a likely constitutional crisis – but will not get a second term. It may be bad enough that a true Grey Champion, equal to Roosevelt or Lincoln will emerge.
God help us if not.

Welcome.

Your description makes 2016 sound more like a crisis trigger, not a regeneracy. After all I think most folks would see the 2016 electoral outcome as the electorate calling for change.  Change from what?  From what came before: Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama. That is change from the 3T.  I thought 2001 and 2008 were crisis triggers because big shit happened. But big shit happened around 1920, and that was no 4T.  The English Civil War was a far bigger event than the Glorious Revolution, yet it was the latter that was the 4T. 

What makes a 4T a 4T is there is a change in the trajectory of the nation's history. For example, inequality was high and real wages at starvation levels mid-17th century.  It helped set the stage for the war.  Population declined during the war and for decades after.  Times did not improve.  And then population bottomed in 1690 and began a rise, which accelerated a couple of decades later.  GDP per capita, which had been flat for a century, began to rise in the late 17th century.  Times got better. There was a sea change in the demographic and economic trajectory in a positive direction that occurred contemporaneously with the GR, not the ECW.  There were also fundamental changes in government.

American inequality peaked in 1916, declined to 1920, then rose to 1916 levels by 1929, and then went down, bottoming only in the late 1970's.  Peacetime government spending had been about 3% of GDP for half a century before 1929.  Over the next couple of decades peacetime government spending rose about six fold, as did the number of federal employees.  In the two decades after 1929, America emerged as the world hegemonic power.  These major changes in the nation's historical trajectory were contemporaneous with the 4T, not the period around 1920, despite the revolutionary zeitgeist present then.

Since 2001, or 2008, there has been no change in trajectory.  The slow-motion collapse of the middle class that has been going on for decades, continued on. This is what the 2016 election was about.  People were writing about it 25 years ago, and are saying the same things today.

I agree that there has been no real change in trajectory during the Obama administration.  Only feeble attempts at fiscal and monetary stimulus and regulatory reform.  Truly reform-minded policy makers, especially Democrats in their window of opportunity before the 2010 mid-terms, could have--should have--driven a wooden stake through the heart of the "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."  (Thank you for that apt metaphor, Matt Taiibi!)

Taiibi, muckraker that he is, was referring, of course, to the historic and outsized influence of Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs on Washington.  And given the proposed executive appointments of Trump, including more Goldman Sachs alums, we will get more of the same laissez-faire policies that exacerbated the last meltdown.   

I have repeatedly characterized the global financial crash of 2008 as "crisis interruptus," because the swift policy response--as inadequate and misguided as it may prove to be in the long run--blunted a developing depression before it could wreak the kind of widespread havoc and suffering experienced in the 1930s.  Consequently, the political will to really fix our economy, our politics, and even our culture has not yet materialized, as it has with past 4T crises.  It's going to take a real critical mass of public opinion (not a consensus) to overturn the old civic order (neoliberalism) and replace it with something else, some kind of post-capitalism that better serves humanity.

I have avoided weighing in on this thread, as germane as it is to S&H theory, simply because I foresee a second financial crisis coming down the pike for reasons similar to--but not exactly the same as--the crash of 2008.  I fear it will be an order of magnitude greater than that one, which is why I characterized the Crash of 2008 as the foreshock to an even bigger quake to come.  My best guess is sometime between 2018-2020.  Like past 4T crises, it will come on slow, slow, and then hit all at once with a vengeance.  (And because Trump's proposed economic policies are stimulative, 2017 could actually be a good year for the financial markets and the economy.) 

Without sounding too glib, when people on this forum ask if the regeneracy is underway, I scoff, much as former NFL head coach Jim Mora did in his famous post-game tirade, when a reporter asked about the Colts’ chances for making it to the playoffs: "What’s that? Ah — Playoffs? Don’t talk about — playoffs?  You kidding me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game! Another game."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tie0tz7jGDI

In a similar vein I say, "Regeneracy? Hell, we haven't even had the real crisis yet!"