03-19-2020, 02:56 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-19-2020, 03:47 PM by Increase Mather.)
Thanks for the replies folks. Since there's a bit of interest, I'll delve down some more.
Who here is familiar with the work of Harry Dent? His thinking has been greatly influenced by Strauss and Howe. Admittedly, he isn't as scholarly as S&H are, but then he comes from the finance world. He used to run a mutual fund back in the day.
His biggest weakness is that he tries to predict the market tops and bottoms with too much specificity, whereas S&H are much more circumspect and allow for anomalies (i.e. the shortened Civil War saeculum). On the other hand, Dent has some high-profile advocates such as David Stockman, the former Treasury Secretary under Reagan.
His basic premise is something like this: you get economic booms in the 1T and 3T, economic busts in the 2T and 4T.
The springtime 1T boom is fueled by pure raw demand. It's the point where new household creation is at its peak (1950s USA). It takes a large dominant Hero generation like G.I.s or Millennials to make this happen.
The summertime 2T bust is characterized by inflation, with the economy overheating and its key inputs becoming scarce. (Think 1970s USA with stagflation, the energy crisis, Jimmy Carter malaise.)
The autumnal 3T boom is fueled by new technological breakthroughs, and the attendant increases in worker productivity. (1920s boom or 1990s tech boom.)
The winter 4T bust is characterized by deflation, when new household creation is at its trough and demand is at its weakest. This is the one elites have a dread fear of. "Deflation" is is verboten word in the financial media, it's rare that anyone even has the cojones to utter this curse word.
So our deflationary winter may have been bit late, but now has finally found the pretext it needed to assert itself. If so, this won't just be a "correction" but a "reset", where all the sectors that have been overpriced for awhile now (healthcare, real estate, higher education) will fall back down to Earth. And contrary to expectations, the middle class will be allowed to preserve its existence for another saeculum. But there's a fair amount of pain and dislocation to come first.
The one idea from Generations that sticks out to me the most right now is, "It is not the triggering event *itself* that creates the Crisis, but rather, *society's reaction to* the triggering event that creates the Crisis".
Who here is familiar with the work of Harry Dent? His thinking has been greatly influenced by Strauss and Howe. Admittedly, he isn't as scholarly as S&H are, but then he comes from the finance world. He used to run a mutual fund back in the day.
His biggest weakness is that he tries to predict the market tops and bottoms with too much specificity, whereas S&H are much more circumspect and allow for anomalies (i.e. the shortened Civil War saeculum). On the other hand, Dent has some high-profile advocates such as David Stockman, the former Treasury Secretary under Reagan.
His basic premise is something like this: you get economic booms in the 1T and 3T, economic busts in the 2T and 4T.
The springtime 1T boom is fueled by pure raw demand. It's the point where new household creation is at its peak (1950s USA). It takes a large dominant Hero generation like G.I.s or Millennials to make this happen.
The summertime 2T bust is characterized by inflation, with the economy overheating and its key inputs becoming scarce. (Think 1970s USA with stagflation, the energy crisis, Jimmy Carter malaise.)
The autumnal 3T boom is fueled by new technological breakthroughs, and the attendant increases in worker productivity. (1920s boom or 1990s tech boom.)
The winter 4T bust is characterized by deflation, when new household creation is at its trough and demand is at its weakest. This is the one elites have a dread fear of. "Deflation" is is verboten word in the financial media, it's rare that anyone even has the cojones to utter this curse word.
So our deflationary winter may have been bit late, but now has finally found the pretext it needed to assert itself. If so, this won't just be a "correction" but a "reset", where all the sectors that have been overpriced for awhile now (healthcare, real estate, higher education) will fall back down to Earth. And contrary to expectations, the middle class will be allowed to preserve its existence for another saeculum. But there's a fair amount of pain and dislocation to come first.
The one idea from Generations that sticks out to me the most right now is, "It is not the triggering event *itself* that creates the Crisis, but rather, *society's reaction to* the triggering event that creates the Crisis".