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(01-09-2017, 09:21 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: Mike,
The 2001 recession was shallow enough (despite the "jobless recovery", something which started happening in the early '90s) and the real estate bubble followed sufficiently soon thereafter, that people didn't really notice the deviation (which, as I remember from the chart you posted, was quite small at that time) until 2008.
I also think that trying to force a direct one-to-one comparison with the 1930s via your political cycle is a bit misguided. History rhymes, it doesn't repeat.
Also, M & T had the peak of the 17th k-wave in 1914, and in their book postulated a 19th k-wave peak around 2030. This would put us no earlier than 1900, if we're going to do it like that. In the Berlusconi thread, I gave an argument for why the high-growth/deconcentration/coalition-building bit should be started no later than the mid-90s, and that the k-wave should peak around 2020-2025. This would place us more in the 1905-1910 range. If I am not mistaken, Turchin has the peak of civil unrest occurring in 2020. So, all in all, I am still more inclined to a Crisis climax starting around 2020.
The times of maximal tumult come when mass hardships meet political offense. The body bags return from a war whose purpose has become shallow, or the economy keeps tanking without an acceptable explanation -- and the elites are caught in obscene indulgence or exploitative corruption. When political life is nothing more than the enforcement of the will of people who see themselves as masters of the people and people are told to accept great hardships on behalf of the elite because of some purpose that those elites see as the highest purpose in life, then even small triggers can force a revolution. Conspicuous consumption by ravenous elites in the presience of mass suffering is one way to make a popular revolution possible.
The elites hijacked the cultural revolution of low-brow white people who thought that they were no longer getting the respect that they deserved and told those people "Just ignore your economic pain; we will punish those who sneer at you". They offered to cut down everyone else because, like the pathetically-unlearned, they do not want an independent middle class that needs to earn more than peon pay. But don't worry; the common man will get hurt too, and the anger that it had toward such people as college professors can change direction quickly.
Just imagine how nasty American politics can get when the people on the populist Right today go to the populist Left. Who knows? America might have a Hugo Chavez in the wings. If we get that, then Donald Trump and the GOP majorities will have made that possible.
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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Not interested, Pbrower. Please direct your "The End is Nigh" rants somewhere else.
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01-09-2017, 01:09 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-09-2017, 01:11 PM by pbrower2a.)
(01-09-2017, 01:04 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Not interested, Pbrower. Please direct your "The End is Nigh" rants somewhere else.
I wish I could believe otherwise. In fact I believed otherwise until late in the evening on November 8, 2016.
If the end is only mine -- who cares but a few people who know me personally? As long as Donald Trump is President I expect to keep Valium and vodka close at hand. I have been close to the suicidal edge for reasons other than political distress or medical calamity, and I know what a suicidal person thinks -- "I hate life!"
The end is nigh only for democracy in the USA. We do not know what the rules will be eleven days from now, do we?
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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01-09-2017, 01:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-09-2017, 01:40 PM by SomeGuy.)
I don't think that this sort of wallowing is doing you the least bit of good.
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01-09-2017, 01:46 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-09-2017, 01:51 PM by TeacherinExile.
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(01-09-2017, 01:01 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Second the point about the next big issue in the financial markets coming from overseas. I was calling for that in 2013 on T4T forum, and conveniently that thread was preserved. When it occurs and what the US response will be, and consequently how it affects us, is still up in the air.
Do you still check in now and again on that avuncular crank--James Howard Kunstler? I ignore his wildly inaccurate rants about Peak Oil as well as his annual (perma-bear) predictions of imminent crashes in the stock market.
But having said that, I do agree with his gut feeling that whoever had won the election--Trump or Clinton--the "winner" is facing a slow-brewing financial crisis with the potential to wreak havoc on a scale similar to that of 2008, if not greater. Impacting not just the global economies, but the very legitimacy of Western governments, already in considerable disrepute.
An excerpt from his "Forecast 2017: The Wheels Finally Come Off"
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/f...-come-off/
...The American people have been punked by their own government and their central bank, the Federal Reserve, for years and the jig is now up. In 2017 both will lose their authority and legitimacy, a very grave matter for the survival of this republic.
As usual, Kunstler is probably early about imminent (2017) doom. I've said it before, and S&H theory says as much with its delineation of an Unraveling phase, Fourth Turning crises come on slow, slow, and then explode with a vengeance.
Insiders surely have seen this coming for a long time. The people running this so-called Deep State of overblown and overgrown institutions probably acted at first with the good intentions of keeping the national lifestyle afloat. But in the end (now approaching) they stooped to too much duplicity and deceit in the desperate attempt to not just preserve the system, but to protect their own reputations and personal perquisites. And now there ought to be some question with the election of 2016 that they have engineered all of this system fragility to blow up on Mr. Trump’s watch, so they can blame him for it. It was going to blow up anyway. But had Hillary Clinton won the election, at least the right gang would have had to take the blame — the people in charge for the past twenty years. Instead, Donald Trump has been elected Designated Bag-Holder...
"Designated Bag-Holder" I like that: as potentially prescient as it is cynically clever. Puts Trump, perhaps, in the same company as Hoover or Carter or Bush the Younger (second term). I wouldn't go so far as to say it didn't matter who won the 2016 election--Trump or Clinton. Of course, it does. But in any case, the incoming president, irrespective of party affiliation, will be confronted with a second--perhaps more devastating--global financial crisis. At a minimum, it will severely test the mettle of Donald Trump and other Western leaders, such as Angela Merkel.
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I read Kunstler every week, and have for years. He is ALWAYS predicting doom. He was predicting doom from Y2K, for crissakes.
Like I said, the nature of the next blow to the financial markets, its timing, and the political fallout from it, remain to be seen. I agree that it will probably originate overseas, but beyond that we're just throwing out scenarios without any real insight.
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A recession at the end of this decade would appear to be baked-in now. How bad it will be remains to be seen. I stand by my prediction that it won't be as bad as 2008, but it may not take more than "almost as bad" to stir up a lot of trouble from one side and/or the other.
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(01-09-2017, 07:58 AM)Odin Wrote: (01-09-2017, 01:21 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: (01-09-2017, 12:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Obama is the President truly caught in a Catch-22: he had to back the financial industry to prevent an economic meltdown already at the same stage of destructiveness as in the late winter of 1931 from making him the "new Hoover" -- but in rescuing those elites he also rescued their potential to buy political influence until by now those elites have enough power to i9mpose a pure plutocracy, a nightmarish order in which about 2% of Americans will be able to get away with enforcing any suffering necessary for the enrichment and pampering of those elites. Maybe we will have been better off to have had a full slide into the economic distress of the 1930s that smashed the narcissism of elites and gutted their economic power, in which case Barack Obama would be entering his second term as President as transformative as FDR instead of someone seemingly intent on stabbing the common man in the back on behalf of people who have no constraints upon their greed and cruelty.
Obama wasn't in a Catch-22 at all. The money in the banks, this time around, was already protected from destruction through the FDIC. Nor was he forced to use the trickle down techniques that he ended up using. Nor would he have been blamed for any negative effects - let's not forget that the unemployment rate continued to rise for two years under his watch, but he still gained reelection by blaming Bush.
Obama was simply stupid enough to listen to the bankers' advice - including that of his own Treasury appointee - on the issue. Of course they wanted the banks bailed out, instead of the more sensible course of letting the bad, failing, banks fail and only bailing out the depositors.
Obama bears full responsibility for "stabbing the common man in the back", as you so aptly put it. And that's why Trump is likely to be an improvement.
If my memory serves me right BUSH was still president when TARP was passed, and it needed to pass because the alternative would have been worse than the Great Depression. When people were saying "The world is going to end if this doesn't happen" they were being fucking serious. The populist idiots on the left and the right who think the bailout was merely some selfish act rather than an emergency measure to prevent absolute disaster are economically illiterate.
Obama only got political fallout because the GOP was able to use the Tea Party to wash their hands of Bush's role in the 2008 Crash.
Valid point about when TARP was passed. Bush certainly gets a full share of blame as well on the issue; perhaps Obama should only get blame for twisting the knife after Bush stabbed it in.
So what "people" were saying the world was going to end? Ultimately, it was bankers and their financial cronies, like Bush's and Obama's Goldman Sachs appointees to Treasury, right? You think they care about the common man's view of the world?
What the financial elites thought was " my world is going to end unless there's a bailout." But they knew that wouldn't be convincing to others, so they claimed " the world" was going to end instead of just their world. And then Bush and a sufficient share of Congress swallowed their claim whole, without looking into it, without looking into alternatives, bailing out the financial elites at the cost of everyone else and of distorting the banking market for years if not decades. And Obama doubled down on bailouts.
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(01-09-2017, 04:29 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: (01-09-2017, 07:58 AM)Odin Wrote: (01-09-2017, 01:21 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: (01-09-2017, 12:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Obama is the President truly caught in a Catch-22: he had to back the financial industry to prevent an economic meltdown already at the same stage of destructiveness as in the late winter of 1931 from making him the "new Hoover" -- but in rescuing those elites he also rescued their potential to buy political influence until by now those elites have enough power to i9mpose a pure plutocracy, a nightmarish order in which about 2% of Americans will be able to get away with enforcing any suffering necessary for the enrichment and pampering of those elites. Maybe we will have been better off to have had a full slide into the economic distress of the 1930s that smashed the narcissism of elites and gutted their economic power, in which case Barack Obama would be entering his second term as President as transformative as FDR instead of someone seemingly intent on stabbing the common man in the back on behalf of people who have no constraints upon their greed and cruelty.
Obama wasn't in a Catch-22 at all. The money in the banks, this time around, was already protected from destruction through the FDIC. Nor was he forced to use the trickle down techniques that he ended up using. Nor would he have been blamed for any negative effects - let's not forget that the unemployment rate continued to rise for two years under his watch, but he still gained reelection by blaming Bush.
Obama was simply stupid enough to listen to the bankers' advice - including that of his own Treasury appointee - on the issue. Of course they wanted the banks bailed out, instead of the more sensible course of letting the bad, failing, banks fail and only bailing out the depositors.
Obama bears full responsibility for "stabbing the common man in the back", as you so aptly put it. And that's why Trump is likely to be an improvement.
If my memory serves me right BUSH was still president when TARP was passed, and it needed to pass because the alternative would have been worse than the Great Depression. When people were saying "The world is going to end if this doesn't happen" they were being fucking serious. The populist idiots on the left and the right who think the bailout was merely some selfish act rather than an emergency measure to prevent absolute disaster are economically illiterate.
Obama only got political fallout because the GOP was able to use the Tea Party to wash their hands of Bush's role in the 2008 Crash.
Valid point about when TARP was passed. Bush certainly gets a full share of blame as well on the issue; perhaps Obama should only get blame for twisting the knife after Bush stabbed it in.
So what "people" were saying the world was going to end? Ultimately, it was bankers and their financial cronies, like Bush's and Obama's Goldman Sachs appointees to Treasury, right? You think they care about the common man's view of the world?
What the financial elites thought was "my world is going to end unless there's a bailout." But they knew that wouldn't be convincing to others, so they claimed "the world" was going to end instead of just their world. And then Bush and a sufficient share of Congress swallowed their claim whole, without looking into it, without looking into alternatives, bailing out the financial elites at the cost of everyone else and of distorting the banking market for years if not decades. And Obama doubled down on bailouts.
Not quite so. It wasn't only the financial elites themselves who said the world could end; nearly every observer in every field said that, and they were right. We were heading off a huge cliff, and only emergency action saved us.
And although I might disagree with the bailouts, because restructuring and downsizing would have been better (as Bernie Sanders recommended), it could not be done because the prevailing neo-liberalism that you believe in stopped it. That would have been "too much interference with the (allegedly) free market." And the other salient point is that Obama's bailouts were better, because provisions were added that made them more accountable for their bailout funds, and because it was followed by financial reforms which may prevent another crash-- except that the neo-liberal Republicans want to repeal it, which would make another 2008 crash all but certain.
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The optimum would have been to break up the "Too Big to Fail" entities. Not so long ago banking was a cottage industry in much of America, and bankers had to concern themselves not only with finding borrows but also depositors. Ideally depositors became borrowers as people saved for significant down payments.
But that is over. It will take another Big Bad Bear to force the end of the concentration of American business. Our tax laws encourage vertical integration and sprawl of operations.
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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I think Iceland handled the situation well. Bail out the depositors, at least the domestic ones, and let the banks that needed to fail, fail.
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(01-09-2017, 09:21 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: Also, M & T had the peak of the 17th k-wave in 1914, and in their book postulated a 19th k-wave peak around 2030. This would put us no earlier than 1900, if we're going to do it like that. In the Berlusconi thread, I gave an argument for why the high-growth/deconcentration/coalition-building bit should be started no later than the mid-90s, and that the k-wave should peak around 2020-2025. This would place us more in the 1905-1910 range. If I am not mistaken, Turchin has the peak of civil unrest occurring in 2020. So, all in all, I am still more inclined to a Crisis climax starting around 2020.
You got me confused here now. I was getting my dates from the leadership cycle deconcentration dates of 1873-1914 for the last cycle and 2000-2025 (proj) for this cycle. We are roughly 3/4 of the way through so that works out to ca 1895.
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SomeGuy Wrote:Also, M & T had the peak of the 17th k-wave in 1914, and in their book postulated a 19th k-wave peak around 2030.
If this is interest rates should have been rising since around 2000. They haven't. Also we should be seeing inflation, actually lots of it given all the money creation. Also strong growth. These are all hallmarks of the rising portion of the K-wave. None of this has happened.
Quote:If I am not mistaken, Turchin has the peak of civil unrest occurring in 2020. So, all in all, I am still more inclined to a Crisis climax starting around 2020.
This is correct, and it occupies the same point in the cycle as the peak in 1920. There was little unrest in 1940's, which would correspond to the last 4T climax. So this doesn't match either.
What exactly is your view of a ca. 2020 climax based on? It seems to be based on your opinion. Is that it?
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(01-09-2017, 05:36 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: I think Iceland handled the situation well. Bail out the depositors, at least the domestic ones, and let the banks that needed to fail, fail.
Exactly. But neoliberals like Eric insisted that bailouts of the banks would be better.
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01-09-2017, 08:04 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-09-2017, 08:34 PM by Mikebert.)
(01-08-2017, 07:48 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Is that why FDR lost the 1940 election? After all, the 1937 recession occurred under his watch, and they had never fully recovered from 1929. .
And Democrats were hammered in the 1938 election losing 80 seats in the House and 5 in the Senate. By the 1940 election recovery was underway and memories of Hoover were still fresh; Willkie was easily defeated though Republicans still managed to gain 5 more seats in the Senate. FDR suffered similar losses in his second term as Obama did in both of his terms. The difference is FDR got to build a head of steam by two more big victories in 1934 and 1936 that he got because he came in at the bottom. From the 1928 to 1936 election Republicans lost nearly 40 Senate seats (56->17) and nearly 200 House seats (287 ->89). Timing matters.
The collapse begun under Bush became Obama's problem. This did not happen to FDR because recovery began in the very month he took office. There was no decline under FDR at all until 1937, by which he had accumulated enormous political capital (see above). Neither Obama, nor Johnson got remotely close to the mandate FDR got.
THe guy who did get such a mandate was Lincoln and Grant, the Civil War heroes. From the 1858 to 1868 elections Dems when from 41 to 9 Senate seats and 131 to 46 House seats. I note both of these cases were in 4Ts. Such huge swings are part of what makes a 4T a 4T. Nothing like that has happened so far.
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(01-09-2017, 07:32 PM)Mikebert Wrote: (01-09-2017, 09:21 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: Also, M & T had the peak of the 17th k-wave in 1914, and in their book postulated a 19th k-wave peak around 2030. This would put us no earlier than 1900, if we're going to do it like that. In the Berlusconi thread, I gave an argument for why the high-growth/deconcentration/coalition-building bit should be started no later than the mid-90s, and that the k-wave should peak around 2020-2025. This would place us more in the 1905-1910 range. If I am not mistaken, Turchin has the peak of civil unrest occurring in 2020. So, all in all, I am still more inclined to a Crisis climax starting around 2020.
You got me confused here now. I was getting my dates from the leadership cycle deconcentration dates of 1873-1914 for the last cycle and 2000-2025 (proj) for this cycle. We are roughly 3/4 of the way through so that works out to ca 1895.
2030 - 2016 = 14
1914 - 14 = 1900
If we do it your way, using 2000 to 2025, 16 / 25 = 64% complete.
1914 - 1873 = 41, and 41 * .64 = 26.24, and 1873 + 26.24 gives 1899.24.
Either way, I think we're taking the idea of historical parallels past the point of ridiculousness, but suit yourself.
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01-09-2017, 09:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-09-2017, 09:34 PM by Mikebert.)
SomeGuy Wrote:A regeneracy does not imply that all problems are solved, only that a consensus has been reached about how society is going to try to solve them, and that the populace is willing to allow them to play it out for the remainder of the 4T.
I just saw this. Here you are assuming your premises. You are assuming the 4T will end soon. Thus, if Trump manages to win a second term, a feat achieved by 78% of the presidents in my lifetime, 2016 will be a regeneracy because Trump will have been the last president of the 4T. Now think about what that means. It says a 4T is such a nothing-burger that whichever party is in control when the generations involved in a 4T are getting too old and so the turning must end defines the structure of the turning.
Past American 4Ts were obvious crises. So you invoke the Glorious 4T that was also a nothing-burger like this one. But exactly what is crisis-like about the Glorious 4T? Yeah we had an Indian war that because the American population in New England was low looks like a big war in terms of casualties per capita. By this measure the second most deadly "war" in American history was the 1634 skirmish between the Pilgrims and Puritans that killed 2. I don't doubt that King Phillips war was a crisis for the New England colonies, but so were all such events for the people affected. And it was over in 1676. Where is the 4T?
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Quote:If this is interest rates should have been rising since around 2000. They haven't. Also we should be seeing inflation, actually lots of it given all the money creation. Also strong growth. These are all hallmarks of the rising portion of the K-wave. None of this has happened.
Excuse me, but M & T explicitly based their measures on production rates of selected industries, NOT on price. The fact that they use the same term as a measure based on consumer price/interest rate cycles (which you acknowledge has broken down) is regrettable but not relevant to THEIR predictions. You have this irritating habit of conflating your pet composite theories with the ones put forth by people like M & T and S & H, then when YOUR predictions prove false claim that this invalidates the people you are borrowing from. Their predictions may prove true or not, but they can only be invalidated on their own terms.
Quote:This is correct, and it occupies the same point in the cycle as the peak in 1920. There was little unrest in 1940's, which would correspond to the last 4T climax. So this doesn't match either.
*Shrugs*
Don't follow him closely. And his cycles don't seem to line up with any of the others. Although, you know, there was a fair amount of unrest during the PREVIOUS 4T, so there is that. 
Quote:What exactly is your view of a ca. 2020 climax based on? It seems to be based on your opinion. Is that it?
My expectations for the FUTURE? Yeah, pretty much speculation, at least until my crystal ball gets out of the shop. The sum total of my reading leads me to expect something dramatic in the 2020s, and has for some time. And my observations of politics/international affairs haven't disabused me of it yet.
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01-09-2017, 09:51 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-09-2017, 09:52 PM by SomeGuy.)
(01-09-2017, 09:26 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I just saw this. Here you are assuming your premises. You are assuming the 4T will end soon. Thus, if Trump manages to win a second term, a feat achieved by 78% of the presidents in my lifetime, 2016 will be a regeneracy because Trump will have been the last president of the 4T. Now think about what that means. It says a 4T is such a nothing-burger that whichever party is in control when the generations involved in a 4T are getting too old and so the turning must end defines the structure of the turning.
Please don't put words in my mouth, Mike, I am more than capable of speaking on my own. I make no such assumption, I think that something is going to happen, something that will be obviously of equivalent magnitude to the WWII/Franco-Prussian War-US Civil War/Napoleonic wars, and I think that Trump will be at the helm during it, and that it might well go on long enough to put Pence in there for a term at the end. If nothing happens, I will, rather than assume that turnings end because the generations end, likely discard T4T all together.
The only caveat I might add is that if dramatic, turning point style events happen in places that I think are also in 4T (East Asia, South Asia, Europe), but we bumble through, that there is a possible parallel with Britain in the 1850s and 1860s. That being said, since in that case the T4T theory will no longer affect me personally, I probably wouldn't consider it that much, except possibly in passing.
The reason why I am so seemingly complacent about it NOW, is that thus far, it's rolling out according to the plan laid out in S & H. If the Republicans get pushed out of Congress in 2018, and Trump two years later, and they get replaced by largely forgettable Democrats, all still operating within the confines of the 6th party system, then I will be more inclined to hold your present views.
I hope you will excuse me for saying this, but this REALLY looks an awful lot like a very geeky version of the sort of sulking I've seen from other liberals around the Internet who are upset at how the election turned out.
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(01-09-2017, 09:34 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Quote:If this is interest rates should have been rising since around 2000. They haven't. Also we should be seeing inflation, actually lots of it given all the money creation. Also strong growth. These are all hallmarks of the rising portion of the K-wave. None of this has happened.
Excuse me, but M & T explicitly based their measures on production rates of selected industries, NOT on price. The fact that they use the same term as a measure based on consumer price/interest rate cycles (which you acknowledge has broken down) is regrettable but not relevant to THEIR predictions. You have this irritating habit of conflating your pet composite theories with the ones put forth by people like M & T and S & H, then when YOUR predictions prove false claim that this invalidates the people you are borrowing from. Their predictions may prove true or not, but they can only be invalidated on their own terms.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who notices that. On the other hand, at least he's actually willing to discuss the theories.
(01-09-2017, 09:51 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: I hope you will excuse me for saying this, but this REALLY looks an awful lot like a very geeky version of the sort of sulking I've seen from other liberals around the Internet who are upset at how the election turned out.
To be fair, I don't think it's a reaction to the election, as he was the same way before the election when everyone was assuming a Clinton win.
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