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Generational Dynamics World View
(08-01-2019, 11:01 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:
(08-01-2019, 12:02 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: No, the Boomers are not running things, and this has been true
since the Fourth Turning began in 2003.  I've written dozens of
articles on the financial crisis, and it's clear what happened.
The Gen-Xers obtained advanced degrees in "financial engineering"
in the 1990s, and used those skills to create fraudulent
synthetic subprime mortgage bonds, and sold them to Boomers
because they hate Boomers.  The Boomers in the banks who supposedly
"ran things" did not understand how they worked, but only knew
that they were making a lot of money for the bank.  So the Gen-Xers
were running things, and caused the financial crisis.

I've personally seen things in the computer industry where Gen-Xers
did unbelievably stupid things, because they wanted to screw Boomers.
The epitome was the Healthcare.gov project which was the greatest
software development disaster in history, and was run by Gen-Xers.
It's in contrast to the global Y2K remediation project, which was run
by Silents and Boomers, and which was the greatest and most successful
software development project in history.

Never blame on malice what can be explained by incompetence.

The proximate cause of the financial crisis was probably Gen X pragmatism, though combined with a Boomer created system that created plenty of moral hazard to interact with the pragmatism.  Gen X loan writers certainly wrote a lot of bogus loans, but it was economically bankrupt mortgage affirmative action, along with subsequent government money to soak up the loans, that created the environment where bogus loans were profitable to write.

That crisis itself was just part of the normal business cycle, though.  It was the bailouts which raised the issue to the level where it might be important to a generational crisis.  The bailouts happened under Bush, a Boomer.

Healthcare.gov reflected incompetency, yes, but so have other software initiatives through the years; it had nothing to do with the crisis.

I don't know what generation is to blame for establishing a system of rewards for reckless lending. Maybe much of the fault lies in giant banks gobbling up smaller regional banks that could not insulate themselves from incompetence or recklessness. By default in our economic system, bankers got deputized with the responsibility to say no to poorly-structured financing of cloying supplicants for loans by ensuring that the borrower gets burned even worse than the lender if the borrower cannot meet the terms. That means collateral in the form of large down-payments or other assets put at risk.

Bankers became more entrepreneurial as bigger risk-takers for bigger profits, and that opened the door to the corrupt speculative boom of the Double-Zero Decade and the ensuing meltdown. See also the Roaring Twenties, eighty years earlier. It may be surprising that banking works best as a cottage industry in which low pay attracts the laziest, least imaginative, and most timid employees to do white-collar work -- but we need that if banking is to keep other people's money from becoming "opium".

Quote:
Quote: Wrote:So you're defending and excusing Hitler -- always a good ploy in
an online discussion.  However, what you've written is completely
irrelevant to my point that Neville Chamberlain was vilified and
hated for decades.  The reason that Chamberlain was hated
and vilified was because of this:

If we're going to have any success in predicting the shape of this crisis, we need to learn from the last one, and that requires shedding of the caricatured stereotypes regarding Nazi Germany in favor of analyzing it honestly.

The agreement in your picture of Chamberlain was the agreement to cede the Sudetenland, so it has everything to do with what I wrote.  Chamberlain was vilified only after his policies had failed to work; before then, the British public supported him over Churchill because before then, his policies were working, at least in the sense that their weaknesses hadn't been revealed yet..



Beyond any question -- this Crisis may have characteristics of earlier Crises, but it will not replicate any Crisis here or elsewhere in detail. I still see the Spanish Civil War far more relevant to this Crisis than the last one, the one before that (the slavery and secession Crisis), or the one before that (the American Revolution and pre-Constitutional anarchy). Internal polarization of American politics and mass culture is far more dangerous to America than is any current foreign threat.

Chamberlain bought time for Britain with the Sudetenland, which would have been a reasonable stopping point for Hitler had Hitler had any integrity. Hitler took over the Czech part of Czechoslovakia and established a satellite state in Slovakia without justification other than his desire to dismember Poland. Chamberlain did parley with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939, but the Soviet terms were too harsh; those would have required that Britain accede to Soviet takeovers of territories not theirs. Hitler of course had no qualms about consigning the Baltic Republics, Finland, eastern pre-war Poland and northeastern pre-war Romania to the Soviet Union.

The story of the time was that no British government dared have Churchill in it because Churchill would have offended Hitler. Once Hitler invaded Poland, such was no longer a concern.

Quote:
Quote:But if you consider yourself an expert on Russia and Europe, perhaps you could answer
several questions that I'm frequently asked, but have no answer for.

Some of these questions are: Will Russia invade Ukraine?  Will Russia
invade Georgia?  Will there be a new war between Germany and Russia?
If so, will France side with Russia?  Which country will England side
with?  Will Russia invade other East European countries?  Will Russia
and Turkey have a new war in the Balkans, in Crimea, and in the
Caucasus?  What will happen with Greece and Italy?

So it would be helpful if you tackle those questions.

I'm more of an expert on China than Russia, which is why I knew all along that China didn't hate the US, something that you only figured out recently.  That said, I'm happy to take a whack at your questions, not that you're interested in actual answers.

The first two are easy:  Russia has already invaded Georgia and Ukraine.  Fortunately the US response was not total appeasement, so Russia has not been encouraged as much as prewar Germany to double down on their escapades.

Will there be a war between Germany and Russia?  The crisis war isn't likely to start between Germany and Russia, but then nor did WWII.  Would France side with Russia?  France never sided with Russia in WWII, so I'm not sure where this question is coming from.

Which country will England side with?  England will side with the US.  Will Russia invade other East European countries, in addition to Ukraine?  They will invade the Baltic states if they think an opportunity arises to do so without risking a war with the US.  Given US foreign policy tends to change substantially every few years, I suppose that means they will invade them eventually.  A mistake in assessing whether there's risk of war with the US in this case is one of the candidates for starting the crisis war, though such a mistake isn't likely under Putin.

Will Russia and Turkey have a new war?  Not in the Balkans and not in Crimea; Turkey doesn't have the interests in those areas that the Ottoman Empire did.  In the Caucasus?  That's more likely, though it's far from a sure thing.

What will happen in Greece and Italy?  Greece will likely continue to be bailed out by the EU if necessary, with the EU continuing to impose austerity if they grant bailouts.  With New Democracy winning an outright majority, they have an opportunity to use appropriate supply side interventions to guide Greece to a full economic recovery.  Whether they'll actually do so under the new prime minister is another question.  You can tell the money grubbing readers that ask this question that Greece is likely to have an economic recovery, but to do their own due diligence; either way, Greece specifically is not highly relevant to the shape of the crisis.

I think Italy is not likely to require a bailout, but if it does, it will get one, while undergoing severe austerity as in Greece.  Again, Italy is not highly relevant to the crisis, and only money grubbers and Italians are interested in this question.

Russia sponsored break-away movements within Ukrainian sovereign territory to establish pro-Russian governments that would request incorporation into Russia at an opportune time, which is complete in Crimea. I am tempted to believe that Russia would be satisfied with a puppet government in Ukraine which is as a whole too big to digest.

With Greece, lowered expectations will solve much of the problem. Greeks need recognize that to live like Germans they will have to move to Germany or that to live like Americans they will have to move to America. If you are talking about Reagan as a model for Greece, then Reagan's supply-side economics did more to cut expectations of an easy life doing easy work among late-wave Boomers and Generation X than to stimulate wealth by facilitating investment. When Reagan was President, lots of young people with considerable talent ended up doing low-paid work in stores, restaurants, and the hospitality trade -- and we got unusual competence in those important activities at the time. (Indeed, the retail industry went into serious decline as more opportunities appeared for young, talented people who saw retailing as a nightmare for abysmal pay). People with dreams of doing something else learned the most important activity in the 'new' economy -- marketing -- instead of being bureaucrats in the manufacturing industry doomed to decline as a share of the American economy. Capitalism has evolved from making things to hustling things, unsettling as such might be for bourgeois sensibilities.

Of course, taking the 'hustle' ethos of the new capitalism to the banking business facilitated the ruin of many banks. Anyone can sell a potential borrower with a huge dream and little foundation for it into taking out a loan. Banking is most successful when it has a tight control on the borrower, namely the threat of foreclosure on good terms for the bank.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist  but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.


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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
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by pbrower2a - 08-02-2019, 12:52 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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