Neil Howe: It’s going to get worse; more financial crises coming

[Marypoza]

(07-29-2016, 04:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: (The Amish) have given up any prospect of living in the post-industrial age by maintaining technology (except for productivity of farm goods and their marketability -- refrigerators and even solar power are OK, but even a transistor radio is prohibited).

--- that's bcuz the Amish have this wierd thing that electricity is the tool of the devil. One of my Aunts used to live in Philly ( the birthplace of electricity, or @ least harnassing it ) & one summer I took one of my own nieces up to visit her & she took us out into the countryside to see an Amish village (in addition to farming, tourism is also big $) They do not hold with electricity, but they want the appliances- the fridges, the washers, & esp sewing machines since they make their own clothes- & it was amazing the way they jerryrigged them to work without electric. Now that I think of it these are all appliances that benefit women. My guess is the women are getting their menfolk to jerryrig these appliances. A/Cs otoh.. my Aunt told us you could tell an Amish house from a Mennonite house bcuz the Mennonite houses had A/Cs hanging out the windows

[Marypoza]

(07-29-2016, 04:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: (The Amish) have given up any prospect of living in the post-industrial age by maintaining technology (except for productivity of farm goods and their marketability -- refrigerators and even solar power are OK, but even a transistor radio is prohibited).

--- that's bcuz the Amish have this wierd thing that electricity is the tool of the devil. One of my Aunts used to live in Philly ( the birthplace of electricity, or @ least harnassing it ) & one summer I took one of my own nieces up to visit her & she took us out into the countryside to see an Amish village (in addition to farming, tourism is also big $) They do not hold with electricity, but they want the appliances- the fridges, the washers, & esp sewing machines since they make their own clothes- & it was amazing the way they jerryrigged them to work without electric. Now that I think of it these are all appliances that benefit women. My guess is the women are getting their menfolk to jerryrig these appliances. A/Cs otoh.. my Aunt told us you could tell an Amish house from a Mennonite house bcuz the Mennonite houses had A/Cs hanging out the windows

[pbrower2a]

(07-29-2016, 09:39 PM)MillsT_98 Wrote:

(07-29-2016, 04:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: We approach the economic crisis of the End of Scarcity, when overproduction threatens to become the norm.

Contemporary elites have been using it, paradoxically, to cut pay, worsen working conditions, and raise economic rents; as such they establish their own class privilege as the sole objective of us all. All the fruits of technological change, human toil not necessary for a level of survival suitable for livestock, and old investment still workable end up going to the economic elites. We are expected to exult in the sultan-like indulgence of those elites.

Let me suggest a group that does not fit that pattern: the Old Order Amish. I doubt that many of us would like to live as they do with their rejection of even the most wholesome of entertainment, their limited education (they keep repeating eighth grade until the school-leaving age of 16), and their limited opportunities in life (practically no white-collar or professional jobs). They are good businessmen, practically re-creating the Gilded Age without the ostentatious display of Gilded elites.  Male chauvinism is the norm; women simply work like men. But they don't have an economy  that better serves legalized loan-sharks than working people. Nobody gets rich among the Amish.

They have given up any prospect of living in the post-industrial age by maintaining technology (except for productivity of farm goods and their marketability -- refrigerators and even solar power are OK, but even a transistor radio is prohibited).

But how great is economic modernity if it comes with gross exploitation characteristic of a plantation society or a fascist regime? I question whether our economic elites have any virtues. What is so great about a loan-shark economy?

Maybe we'll overcome that during the 4T—maybe it's what the 4T is all about.

Of course. A 4T is the time when the big philosophical issues of the time are sorted out. Is the common man to have a stake in the system or is he to be debased as he was in the Marxist stereotype of capitalist exploitation? The capitalist class of the early twentieth century found the consumer society the means of ensuring that working people had no cause to see capitalists as the new equivalent of slave-masters on a plantation. Turning the proletariat into a market for the productivity of capitalism saved capitalism from the possibility of a Marxist revolution. When capitalism allows the common man to have a car, a decent flat, a refrigerator, schooling for his kids, and medical care, it can keep the masses quiet about overthrowing capitalist exploiters. But stick the worker with early-capitalist conditions that imply that he must suffer for the enrichment and pampering of elites, that he must send his kids off to work when he gets crippled in an industrial accident, and that his living quarters are pestilential fire-traps like the slums of Moscow in 1917... then a crop failure or a military debacle might bring out the red flags with hammer-and-sickle emblems.

Will we tax the super-productivity of human-free manufacturing to allow a welfare-driven economy? Maybe. That's one solution. Will we have an economy best described as having plantation-style inequality due to mass unemployment? That's also possible.

[Anonymous24]

"I'll stick with my original October 2019 date for the financial crash."

Some kind of catastrophe typically happens every 80 years in American history. Revolutionary War from 1775-1783, Civil War from 1861-1865, World War II from 1941-1945, so based on that it seems something bad might happen in the next presidential term or two.

[pbrower2a]

(11-02-2016, 07:53 AM)Anonymous24 Wrote: "I'll stick with my original October 2019 date for the financial crash."

Some kind of catastrophe typically happens every 80 years in American history.  Revolutionary War from 1775-1783, Civil War from 1861-1865, World War II from 1941-1945, so based on that it seems something bad might happen in the next presidential term or two.

I see the 2000 Tech Crash analogous to the Panic of 1921 and the more severe, protracted, and dangerous financial meltdown beginning in 2007 parallel for a year and a half to the economic meltdown beginning in the Great Market Crash of 1929, toughly 80 years apart in both cases.

The question: did Barack Obama and other contemporary politicians throw a monkey wrench into the imaginable (if horrible) need for a full meltdown that would have forced major reforms of the economic order as Americans accepted in the 1930s, or do we have the other shoe waiting to drop with a completion of the meltdown?

[Eric the Green]

I used to see declining oil prices as an encouragement to consumption and more pollution, but it has a great benefit in that it makes oil booms end in a bust. "If there's a God," I might say, or if the stars are right, oil prices will crash and burn and the money will go to alternative energy full tilt.

[beechnut79]

(06-02-2016, 06:50 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(05-30-2016, 10:34 PM)MillsT_98 Wrote:

(05-27-2016, 11:42 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-26-2016, 12:12 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I'm not worried about rich "individuals" having to pay more, and do not consider this "authoritarian."

Not so many years ago, it was standard partisan (expletive deleted) to call any Democrat a Communist, any Republican a Nazi.  I tried to suppress this false argument as ridiculous abuse of words which ought to have real meaning.  While I won't claim significant credit, the free use of Communist / Nazi descriptors seems to be far less fashionable these days.  If nothing else, it has just been over done.  If somebody uses these inappropriate descriptions, it reflects poorly on the person using the description more than the person allegedly being described.

These days, instead of 'Communist' or 'Nazi' people are using 'authoritarian'.  Same thing.  The word has been changed to protect the propagandists.  

Who is the word being used to attack?  What is the new meaning of the word?  It seems like an 'authoritarian' is anyone who dislikes the corrupt politics as usual that favors the wealthy few.

Now, I'm not authoritarian.  I'll express dislike of Stalin, Hitler and Saddam equally and vehemently.  I'm the modern Whig.  I'm in favor of democracy, human rights, equality and freedom.  At the same time, I see an element in all of the crises in modern Anglo-American history of a wealthy elite establishment having too much power.  There is generally a new elite who acquired wealth using a new technology allying with the People to weaken the hold of the old elite in the name of the Whig virtues.

From my neo-whig perspective, the authoritarian is generally the establishment rather than the People and the new elite.  The authoritarians using force and coercion to subdue and subjugate the People are the kings, nobility, slave owners and robber barons.  This generalization might not apply so cleanly this time around.  Still, applying it to the anti-establishment side doesn't feel right to me.

Anyway, when you see the word 'authoritarian' thrown around, compare it to the recent use of 'Communist' or 'Nazi'.

Speaking of which, when did the "new elite" become the "old elite"? I know right now the Boomer elite is now the old elite but I know back in the 2T they were the new elite, but when was the turning point?

The Boomer elite had not materialized yet during the 2T. They were in their disco phase at that time. Their version of elite materialized in the mid-1980s with the Yuppie phenomenon. Officially the Yuppie craze lasted only about four years and ended with the stock market crash in the fall of 1987. By then it had  become as fashionable to bash Yuppies as it had once been to be one. And yet the term is still very much with us today.

In many ways you said what I was going to say, but it was during the time of the Yuppie phenomenon that what I love to refer to as a "creed of greed" really began to take the helm, and even with the passing of that craze it has pretty much continued to this day.

[Eric the Green]

(12-07-2016, 05:10 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(06-02-2016, 06:50 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(05-30-2016, 10:34 PM)MillsT_98 Wrote:

(05-27-2016, 11:42 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-26-2016, 12:12 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I'm not worried about rich "individuals" having to pay more, and do not consider this "authoritarian."

Not so many years ago, it was standard partisan (expletive deleted) to call any Democrat a Communist, any Republican a Nazi.  I tried to suppress this false argument as ridiculous abuse of words which ought to have real meaning.  While I won't claim significant credit, the free use of Communist / Nazi descriptors seems to be far less fashionable these days.  If nothing else, it has just been over done.  If somebody uses these inappropriate descriptions, it reflects poorly on the person using the description more than the person allegedly being described.

These days, instead of 'Communist' or 'Nazi' people are using 'authoritarian'.  Same thing.  The word has been changed to protect the propagandists.  

Who is the word being used to attack?  What is the new meaning of the word?  It seems like an 'authoritarian' is anyone who dislikes the corrupt politics as usual that favors the wealthy few.

Now, I'm not authoritarian.  I'll express dislike of Stalin, Hitler and Saddam equally and vehemently.  I'm the modern Whig.  I'm in favor of democracy, human rights, equality and freedom.  At the same time, I see an element in all of the crises in modern Anglo-American history of a wealthy elite establishment having too much power.  There is generally a new elite who acquired wealth using a new technology allying with the People to weaken the hold of the old elite in the name of the Whig virtues.

From my neo-whig perspective, the authoritarian is generally the establishment rather than the People and the new elite.  The authoritarians using force and coercion to subdue and subjugate the People are the kings, nobility, slave owners and robber barons.  This generalization might not apply so cleanly this time around.  Still, applying it to the anti-establishment side doesn't feel right to me.

Anyway, when you see the word 'authoritarian' thrown around, compare it to the recent use of 'Communist' or 'Nazi'.

Speaking of which, when did the "new elite" become the "old elite"? I know right now the Boomer elite is now the old elite but I know back in the 2T they were the new elite, but when was the turning point?

The Boomer elite had not materialized yet during the 2T. They were in their disco phase at that time. Their version of elite materialized in the mid-1980s with the Yuppie phenomenon. Officially the Yuppie craze lasted only about four years and ended with the stock market crash in the fall of 1987. By then it had  become as fashionable to bash Yuppies as it had once been to be one. And yet the term is still very much with us today.

In many ways you said what I was going to say, but it was during the time of the Yuppie phenomenon that what I love to refer to as a "creed of greed" really began to take the helm, and even with the passing of that craze it has pretty much continued to this day.

Yes, and from 1984, among all the generations (not just Boomers by any means, but even more with Gen X coming of age), the Third Turning took hold and still has us in its grip, powered by the memes of the president of that time. Now it's leading us into what could be one hell of a crisis, with a crazy man at the helm carrying out the Reagan memes and creeds of greed to their illogical conclusion.

[pbrower2a]

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Authoritarianism

Quote:Like the earlier mob leaders, the spokesmen for totalitarian movements possessed an unerring instinct for anything that ordinary party propaganda or public opinion did not care to touch. Everything hidden, everything passed over in silence, became of major significance, regardless of its own intrinsic importance. The mob really believed that truth was whatever respectable society had hypocritically passed over, or covered with corruption … The modern masses do not believe in anything visible, in the reality of their own experience. What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part.

For those of us on the other side of Donald Trump, let us try to rediscover the validity of truth that transcends wish-fulfillment and value as entertainment. Let us remember that words have meanings, and that the millennia of discovery of basic and irrefutable truth have come to Humanity at great expense and that might have to be relearned at great expense should people abandon them for something convenient but catastrophically false.

America has a hard lesson in basic civics awaiting it. So did Russia in 1917 and Germany in 1933.

[pbrower2a]

Worthy of resurrection now that we have Donald Trump as President with a compliant Congress to do his bidding. Will he be as erratic with economic stewardship as he is with foreign policy? Will he get a chance to push economic policies that have the obvious intent of enriching elites at the expense of everyone else, only to bring about an economic tailspin that eventually hurts the elites?

It is worth remembering that eight-year bull markets rarely sustain themselves. Character matters greatly with leaders, which explains why the Armed Services put so much emphasis into the establishment of character in military cadets. It's possible to have great character without having been a soldier, but unless one has a severe handicap someone with great character usually becomes a fine soldier or officer. Barack Obama would have been an excellent officer from Second Lieutenant through at least Colonel in the Army.  But he is about as much as a spit-and-polish leader as one can get away with in civilian life.

Donald Trump? He would have been fragged if he weren't court-martialed.

[Bad Dog]

Every day I pass blaring screens of "new intra-day market highs".

No money to bet otherwise.

[Ragnarök_62]

(02-27-2017, 10:12 AM)Bad Dog Wrote: Every day I pass blaring screens of "new intra-day market highs".

No money to bet otherwise.

R U shure?

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/shld/option-chain




http://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SHLD/key-...ics?p=SHLD

[Teejay]

I am in full agreement with Neil Howe and I can provide an antipodean perspective (Australia and New Zealand). We here avoided the first Global Financial Crisis which hit North America and Europe very hard. The downside of that is that the housing bubble which was already pretty big when the GFC hit, inflated even more since then. 

Overall Australia and New Zealand are about as bad as California was before the last Global Financial Crisis, when it comes to the housing bubble. Australia I believe because of reasons I have stated on another thread is going to face an economic depression on the scale of Greece's once the housing bubble collapses. This economic depression will be considered by future historians to be worse than the Great Depression was. The prospect of this happening is soon is about as scary as dying for me.

[pbrower2a]

(09-02-2018, 05:31 AM)Teejay Wrote: I am in full agreement with Neil Howe and I can provide an antipodean perspective (Australia and New Zealand). We here avoided the first Global Financial Crisis which hit North America and Europe very hard. The downside of that is that the housing bubble which was already pretty big when the GFC hit, inflated even more since then. 

Overall Australia and New Zealand are about as bad as California was before the last Global Financial Crisis, when it comes to the housing bubble. Australia I believe because of reasons I have stated on another thread is going to face an economic depression on the scale of Greece's once the housing bubble collapses. This economic depression will be considered by future historians to be worse than the Great Depression was. The prospect of this happening is soon is about as scary as dying for me.

We have been building the wrong sorts of housing in America -- horrid McMansions and prefabricated slums -- since the real-estate meltdown. We should have been building plain, honest tract houses analogous (if updated) to those that returning GI heroes found fully adequate.

With their architectural pomposity and shabby construction, the McMansions will likely not have the durability of the honest bungalows that came into existence in the late 40s. Apartments? If you think Detroit is bad, it was an analogue to Silicon Valley as the home of the highest technology (automobiles) at the time, and it attracted people from all over the world to work in the auto plants. Detroit had almost two million people at its peak and very high rents. Does that sound familiar? Just think of what San Jose can be like when it is no longer such a mecca for talented people who spend half their income on property rent. Oh, but it is California... have you ever heard of Richmond, California? It is a real dump. A paradise climate will not be enough.

Property values increase because more people are competing to live in such housing exists. But speculation gets ahead of the cost curve, and people keep saying such things as "The Good Lord isn't making more real estate". Contrary to the myth that real-estate promoters push and that politicians enforce, anything can be priced too high, and when the prices are too high the collapse is certain.

[Teejay]

(09-02-2018, 09:53 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-02-2018, 05:31 AM)Teejay Wrote: I am in full agreement with Neil Howe and I can provide an antipodean perspective (Australia and New Zealand). We here avoided the first Global Financial Crisis which hit North America and Europe very hard. The downside of that is that the housing bubble which was already pretty big when the GFC hit, inflated even more since then. 

Overall Australia and New Zealand are about as bad as California was before the last Global Financial Crisis, when it comes to the housing bubble. Australia I believe because of reasons I have stated on another thread is going to face an economic depression on the scale of Greece's once the housing bubble collapses. This economic depression will be considered by future historians to be worse than the Great Depression was. The prospect of this happening is soon is about as scary as dying for me.

We have been building the wrong sorts of housing in America -- horrid McMansions and prefabricated slums -- since the real-estate meltdown. We should have been building plain, honest tract houses analogous (if updated) to those that returning GI heroes found fully adequate.

With their architectural pomposity and shabby construction, the McMansions will likely not have the durability of the honest bungalows that came into existence in the late 40s. Apartments? If you think Detroit is bad, it was an analogue to Silicon Valley as the home of the highest technology (automobiles) at the time, and it attracted people from all over the world to work in the auto plants. Detroit had almost two million people at its peak and very high rents. Does that sound familiar? Just think of what San Jose can be like when it is no longer such a mecca for talented people who spend half their income on property rent. Oh, but it is California... have you ever heard of Richmond, California? It is a real dump. A paradise climate will not be enough.

Property values increase because more people are competing to live in such housing exists. But speculation gets ahead of the cost curve, and people keep saying such things as "The Good Lord isn't making more real estate". Contrary to the myth that real-estate promoters push and that politicians enforce, anything can be priced too high, and when the prices are too high the collapse is certain.

Australia has had that problem with poorly built houses and apartment blocks which are going to fall apart in the near future. Ironically housing built back in the 1950's is of better quality and will last longer than stuff that has built in the last decade.

Australia also has had high population growth in the last decade by going from having of population of 21 to 25 million. Australia's housing crisis has not been caused solely by a lack of supply. However the demand (fueled by high immigration rates), along with tax breaks favorable for housing (where rental losses can be offset against future income) has fueled a housing bubble comparable to places such as Vancouver and California. 

When the housing bubble bursts, Australia is going to enter an economic depression comparable to what Greece has experienced. National GDP will fall by up to 26% and unemployment rise to around 30%, although the Australian dollar will fall to an extremely low level. Although it is not going to be as protracted as Greece's (which is in the Eurozone).

Socially this will mean an exodus of professionals and people with dual citizenship in other countries from Australia, resulting population growth screeching to a halt and shrinking for a little while. Also I am predicting very visible tent cities popping up across the country.

Politically our party system with the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal-National Party coalition is likely going to collapse like it did in Greece, Italy and Spain. I can't predict how the new party system will turn, although the radical left will come into prominence when the bank bailouts and austerity to pay for it comes.

[pbrower2a]

A huge chunk of American income goes into rent. It used to be a canon of real estate lenders that it was unwise to buy a house unless the cost of the mortgage loan is more than 35% of the person's income. Even with a new home that implies insurance and taxes as reliable costs (for which lenders typically required an escrow account). Rent was of course to be much less expensive as a share of income because it has no quality of investment.

In California, many people are spending 60-70% of their after-tax income on property rents just for the privilege of being near their places of employment. Should rental rates crash, then goes a big chunk of the economy even if life gets better for renters. California is a slumlord's paradise in part because property taxes (thanks to Proposition 13) are low.

Near-zero interest rates keep the financial cost of owning mortgaged property (and many apartment owners borrowed to build) low. Low property taxes mean poor K-12 education.

Ask a tenant how his life would change if his rents fell by 20%... it would be a windfall. A crash for some is a better life for those who have been gouged.

[Hintergrund]

(02-27-2017, 04:00 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: It is worth remembering that eight-year bull markets rarely sustain themselves.

Yeah, stocks are damn high. When the Crash happens, whoever's POTUS is toast.

[pbrower2a]

(09-03-2018, 07:58 PM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(02-27-2017, 04:00 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: It is worth remembering that eight-year bull markets rarely sustain themselves.

Yeah, stocks are damn high. When the Crash happens, whoever's POTUS is toast.

Return to the interest rates of the 1970s and 1980s, and we might have two Presidents who are toast because the disappearance of near-zero interest rates will cause security prices to crater.

[LPDec63]

So, reading through this thread is interesting now that we know that we have a new great recession with Depression level unemployment.

Also we have literally zero interest rates and an Oil collapse.

Interesting times indeed.

[pbrower2a]

(05-20-2020, 08:12 AM)LPDec63 Wrote: So, reading through this thread is interesting now that we know that we have a new great recession with Depression level unemployment.  

Also we have literally zero interest rates and an Oil collapse.  

Interesting times indeed.

I figured that the Obama bull market would fall apart if mishandled. There has been plenty of chaos in the securities markets. Zero interest rates mean that the government has to subsidize private investment to encourage it... negative taxes?

High unemployment rates will erode some, but probably not enough to save the Trumpenstein monster in November.