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Generational Dynamics World View
*** 1-Jan-19 World View -- Generational Dynamics 2019 Forecast: The Camel versus the Can

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
  • Generational Dynamics 2019 Forecast: The Camel versus the Can
  • Separatist violence in India's Kashmir and Jammu
  • The Mideast - increasing ethnic and secular tensions
  • Russia's existential threats to Ukraine
  • North Korea continues nuclear weapons development
  • China continues to prepare for war
  • Preparations for a global pandemic
  • Stock market bubble continues
  • U.S. debt continues to become increasingly unsustainable
  • The future of Generational Dynamics

****
**** Generational Dynamics 2019 Forecast: The Camel versus the Can
****


[Image: g181231b.jpg]
The straw that broke the camel's back

In forecasting the events of 2019, we're going to use two metaphors.

One is "the straw that breaks the camel's back." This commonly used
metaphor suggests a scenario where someone is piling one straw after
another onto a camel's back. You know with 100% certainty that the
weight will eventually break the camel's back, but it's impossible to
predict when. You won't know which straw breaks the camel's back
until after it happens.

Putting that into analytical terms, if you have a long-term trend that
gets worse and worse, then there's a new saying that applies: "If
something can't go on forever, then it won't." At some point, the
long-term trend ends with a growing or full-scale panic, resulting in
a financial crash or a war.

The other metaphor is "kicking the can down the road," which means
taking some action that postpones a problem, but makes the problem
worse in the long run. If we stretch the camel metaphor a little
farther, we can imagine adding protein to the hay we feed the camel,
in order to strengthen the camel's back while we're piling on straw.
It will take longer for the camel's back to break, but when it does,
the poor camel will be almost destroyed. In analytical terms, this
means that some action is taken to permit the long-term trend to
continue for a while longer, albeit with even worse consequences when
the panic finally occurs.

In each of the forecasts in the following sections, there is trend for
something that's getting worse or more dangerous, because this is a
generational Crisis era, because the survivors of World War II are
almost completely gone. The trend may continue to worsen in 2019 with
no major consequence, or there may be a full-scale panic leading to a
financial crash or a war, or the international community may take
steps to kick the can down the road.

If any one of these leads to a panic, then a panic may be triggered in
the others, leading to a world war.

****
**** Separatist violence in India's Kashmir and Jammu
****


Kashmir and Jammu are the two provinces of colonial India that were
the epicenter of the massive 1947 Partition War between Muslims and
Hindus that followed the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into
India and Pakistan. Starting in the 1980s, Pakistan-supported
separatist groups have been conducting terrorist attacks in the
Indian-government portion of Kashmir.

The situation on the ground has worsened substantially in the last two
years, in the terrorist attacks have become much more "organic,"
meaning that they're being perpetrated by young Muslims growing up in
Kashmir, rather than by jihadists imported from Pakistan.

This is an archetypical example of how the generational cycle works.
The 1947 Partition War was one of the bloodiest and move horrific wars
of the entire century, and anyone who survived that war, whether
Muslim or Hindu, would have vowed to spend their entire lives making
sure that nothing like that happened again. And the survivors
succeed, but eventually the survivors die off, and younger generations
with such inhibitions come to power, and start a new horrific war,
repeating the cycle.

In Kashmir, the trend line is that there is a growing number of young
Muslims coming of age without the influence of survivors of the 1947
Partition war, and are attracted to the separatist movement. At the
same time, there is a growing number of Hindu members of the Indian
army and police coming of age. The young Muslims are willing to
commit increasingly serious terrorist acts in their separatist cause,
while the young Hindus are are willing to be increasingly violent with
the separatists, in the vain hope of ending the separatist movement
completely.

So there are two trend lines here, with both the young Muslims and the
young Hindus becoming increasingly xenophobic and violent. Indian
security forces try to kick the can down the road with a variety of
techniques, such as spending money on social outreach to Muslims or
such as implementing curfews. But these two trend lines cannot
increase forever, and at some point the situation will spiral out of
control into a larger war. That might happen in 2019.

Related Articles:

****
**** The Mideast - increasing ethnic and secular tensions
****


There are so many trend lines of increasing tension and violence in
the Mideast, that it's almost impossible to count them, in Syria,
between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and between Israelis and Palestinians.
These trend lines were particularly exposed by the 67-day war in 2014
between Israel and Hamas. The increasing hostility behind these trend
lines was further exposed on June 5, 2017, when Saudi Arabia, United
Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt imposed a land, sea and air
blockade on Qatar.

President Trump's recent announcement of a quick American troop
withdrawal from Syria -- which has recently been modified to a "slow
withdrawal" -- has further hardened these fault lines, as different
factions compete to fill the vacuum in eastern Syria tha the US
withdrawal will leave behind. There are three major sets of alliances
among the Mideast countries:
  • Iran, Syria, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iraq Shia militias, Yemen
    Houthis
  • Turkey, Qatar, some Syria opposition factions, Hamas, Muslim
    Brotherhood
  • Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, some Syria opposition factions,
    Jordan, Oman, Kuwait, Palestinian Authority. To some extent, Israel
    is a part of this alliance.

From the point of view of Generation Dynamics, the Mideast is
particularly difficult to analyze because of multiple generational
timelines. The last crisis war climax for Saudi Arabia occurred in
the 1920s, for Israel and the Palestinians in the late 1940s, for
Syria and Lebanon in the early 1980s, and for Iraq and Iran in the
late 1980s. Each of these timelines and their interactions has to be
analyzed separately to get precise forecasts for the future of the
Mideast.

The general Generational Dynamics forecast is that there will be a
larger regional Mideast war that is coming with 100% certainty,
pitting Arabs vs Jews, Sunnis vs Shias, and various ethnic groups
against each other. This will be part of the Clash of Civilizations
world war, and nothing can be done to prevent it. It might begin in
2019. Jerusalem Post

****
**** Russia's existential threats to Ukraine
****


Russia is not an existential threat to America, but it is an
existential threat to Ukraine.

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, Russia has conducted one
act of war after another against Ukraine, including invading Crimea,
annexing Crimea, building the Kerch Strait bridge and blockading the
Sea of Azov and, most recently, seizing three Ukrainian ships in
international waters, and abducting and torturing the 24 crew members.
Ukraine has retaliated by implementing martial law and prohibiting
Russian men aged 16-60 from entering Ukraine.

A dramatic development occurred late in 2018 when there was a historic
split between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches with the
blessing of the Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. This is a
huge loss of prestige to Moscow, and the Russians are furious.

The trend lines are that Russia is perpetrating increasingly
belligerent military actions targeting Ukraine, and Ukraine is
desperately looking for ways to retaliate. Fears are growing that
Russia is planning a new invasion of Ukraine in 2019.

Related Articles:


****
**** North Korea continues nuclear weapons development
****


2018 was a remarkable year of kicking the can down the road by means
of a charm offensive, starting with North Korean participation in the
Seoul Olympics.

But the "North Korea problem" has become objectively much worse than
it was a year ago. The North Koreans have been continuing development
of nuclear weapon and ballistic missile technology, with the one
exception that they haven't been able to publicly test their new
developments.

The charm offensive has also changed the border between North and
South Korea. And the DMZ is being demilitarized, with military posts
and land mines being removed along the border. Those were put there
to prevent or slow an invasion by North Korea of Seoul in South Korea.
North Korea has never repudiated its stated intention of unifying
North and South Korea under military control by the North.

So the North Korean charm offensive has kicked the can down the road
for a whole year, in that there have been no public tests of nuclear
weapons or ballistic missiles. But that could change in 2019, and
North Korea has become considerably more dangerous in the last year.

Related Articles:

****
**** China continues to prepare for war
****


As I recently wrote in "30-Dec-18 World View -- Xi Jinping's speech on 'the humiliation of the Chinese nation for centuries'"
, China's government
blames the world for 200 years of "humiliation of the Chinese nation."
China is becoming increasingly nationalistic, xenophobic, and
militaristic. Whether it's militarizing the South China Sea or
developing and deploying new nuclear missile systems, China is
preparing to launch an attack on the United States at a time of its
choosing. It may choose 2019.

****
**** Preparations for a global pandemic
****


The rapidly spreading Ebola pandemic in eastern Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC) caught a lot of people by surprise, and it will be
continuing well into 2019.

On average, in one corner of the world or another, a new infectious
disease has emerged every year for the past 30 years: Mers, Nipah,
Hendra, swine flu, bird flu, and many more. Researchers estimate that
birds and mammals harbor anywhere from 631,000 to 827,000 unknown
viruses that could potentially leap into humans.

The international community, led by the World Health Organization
(WHO) or the American Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have defined
protocols and procedures to prevent outbreaks of new diseases from
becoming pandemics. However, wars and mass migrations can defeat
these protocols.

It was exactly a century ago, in 1918, that the Spanish flu pandemic
began (though probably not in Spain). In two years, it killed as many
as 100 million people, 5% of the world's population, and far more than
the number who died in World War I. There could be a new pandemic in
2019. The Atlantic

****
**** Stock market bubble continues
****


[Image: g181231d.gif]
S&P 500 Price/Earnings ratio at 19.60 on December 28, indicating a huge stock market bubble (WSJ)

According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, the S&P 500 Price/Earnings index (stock valuations index)
on Friday morning (December 28) was at an astronomically high 19.60
This is far above the historical average of 14, indicating that the
stock market bubble is still growing, and could burst at any time.

The P/E ratio fell to the range of 5-6 three times in the last
century, in 1919, 1949 and 1982, and it's overdue to do so again.
When that happens, the DJIA will fall to around the 3000 range.

If we use 1929 as an example, there was an initial panic, then a
partial recovery. John Kenneth Galbraith's 1954 book The Great
Crash - 1929
described what happened next:

<QUOTE>"A common feature of all these earlier troubles
[previous panics] was that having happened they were over. The
worst was reasonably recognizable as such. The singular feature
of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to
worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to
have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more
ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure
that as few as possible escaped the common misfortune.

The fortunate speculator who had funds to answer the first margin
call presently got another and equally urgent one, and if he met
that there would still be another. In the end all the money he
had was extracted from him and lost. The man with the smart
money, who was safely out of the market when the first crash came,
naturally went back in to pick up bargains. ... The bargains then
suffered a ruinous fall. Even the man who waited out all of
October and all of November, who saw the volume of trading return
to normal and saw Wall Street become as placid as a produce
market, and who then bought common stocks would see their value
drop to a third or fourth of the purchase price in the next
twenty-four months. ... The ruthlessness of [the stock market was]
remarkable." (p. 108-109)<END QUOTE>


Generational Dynamics predicts that the P/E ratio will fall to the 5-6
range or lower, which is where it was as recently as 1982, resulting
in a Dow Jones Industrial Average of 3000 or lower.

I hear more and more analysts express concern about a "20-30%
correction," with the expectation that once the correction reaches
bottom, the stock market will recover to new highs. These analysts
always advise people to "buy into the dips," which is what Galbraith
was describing above.

With the P/E ratio so high, at some point there will be a full-scale
panic, and the process described by Galbraith will happen again. It
might happen in 2019.

Related Articles:

****
**** U.S. debt continues to become increasingly unsustainable
****


I used to worry about U.S. debt, but on this issue I've turned into
Alfred E. Neuman. Does it really matter whether US debt is at $20
trillion, $30 trillion or $50 trillion? It's unsustainable either
way.

The Trump administration is issuing $1.3 trillion in US government
debt this year, more than twice the 2017 amount. This can't go on
forever, and if something can't go on forever, then it won't. When
the bond panic occurs, it will be a massive global financial disaster,
and $20 trillion or $30 trillion won't make much difference. It will
be a disaster either way.

Issuing more and more US debt depends on foreign buyers and investors
willing to buy US debts. But in the last couple of months, demand for
US debt, particularly 30 year Treasury bonds, has fallen to the lowest
level in almost ten years. Will foreigners start buying US debt
again, or could this be the start of a bond panic? What, me worry?
Fiscal Times

****
**** The future of Generational Dynamics
****


The trend line for me is that because of my age I'm unable to get a
job, and since my only income is social security, I'm going to run out
of money in 2019, which will be the end of both me and Generational
Dynamics. Job descriptions in the computer industry often mention
pizza parties and exercise rooms as a way of telling people over 30
not to apply. What I need is for someone to hire me and pay me a
regular salary as a journalist, or as an analyst, or as a Senior
Software Engineer. Help would be appreciated. Dice.com and Resume


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, India, Kashmir, Jammu, Pakistan,
Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Hamas,
Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood,
Russia, Ukraine, Kerch Strait, Sea of Azov,
North Korea, South Korea, China, South China Sea, Xi Jinping,
John Kenneth Galbraith, Price/earnings ratio

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John J. Xenakis
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Messages In This Thread
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 05-14-2016, 03:21 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 05-23-2016, 10:31 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 08-11-2016, 08:59 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 01-18-2017, 09:23 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 02-04-2017, 10:08 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 03-13-2017, 03:33 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 03-15-2017, 02:56 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 03-15-2017, 03:13 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 05-30-2017, 01:04 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 07-08-2017, 01:34 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 08-09-2017, 11:07 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 08-10-2017, 02:38 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 10-25-2017, 03:07 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by rds - 10-31-2017, 03:35 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by rds - 10-31-2017, 06:33 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by noway2 - 11-20-2017, 04:31 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 12-28-2017, 11:00 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 12-31-2017, 11:14 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 06-22-2018, 02:54 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-11-2018, 01:42 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-11-2018, 01:54 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-19-2018, 12:43 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-25-2018, 02:18 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-11-2018, 01:58 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 08-18-2018, 03:42 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 08-19-2018, 04:39 AM
1-Jan-19 World View -- Generational Dynamics 2019 Forecast: The Camel versus the Can - by John J. Xenakis - 12-31-2018, 10:54 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 09-25-2019, 11:12 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 03-09-2020, 02:11 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Camz - 03-10-2020, 10:10 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 03-12-2020, 11:11 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 03-16-2020, 03:21 PM
RE: 58 year rule - by Tim Randal Walker - 04-01-2020, 11:17 AM
RE: 58 year rule - by John J. Xenakis - 04-02-2020, 12:25 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Isoko - 05-04-2020, 02:51 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 01-04-2021, 12:13 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by CH86 - 01-05-2021, 11:17 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-10-2021, 06:16 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-11-2021, 09:06 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-12-2021, 02:53 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-13-2021, 03:58 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-13-2021, 04:16 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-15-2021, 03:36 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 08-19-2021, 03:03 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 08-21-2021, 01:41 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-27-2022, 06:06 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-27-2022, 10:42 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-28-2022, 12:26 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-28-2022, 04:08 PM

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