	Generational Dynamics
	Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 17-Oct-2008
Stock markets in Iraq and Iran are surging.

Web Log - October, 2008

Stock markets in Iraq and Iran are surging.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says "it is the end of capitalism."

The Tehran stock market has been unaffected by the credit crisis that's affected other stock markets around the world. This includes stock markets in neighboring Gulf states.

But it doesn't include Iraq's stock market, which soared 40% in September, at a time when other stock markets were crashing.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the reason is simple: Both countries are in generational Awakening eras. The bloody, genocidal Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, and now a full generation has passed.

The Iran/Iraq war devastated, destroyed and flattened both countries. When the war ended, people in both countries started rebuilding.

Now, 25 years later, both countries' industries are really humming. Instead of living off of credit, both countries are generating goods and services. What a radical idea!

Contrast that with the United States where, in the last ten years, tens of millions of manufacturing jobs have fled to China, and as many service jobs have fled to India, and the principal business of the country has been financial transactions and figuring out more ways to create new debt and credit.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when the United States was in a generational Awakening era, our industries were really humming. The Great Depression had destroyed most existing businesses, and forced the remaining ones to completely renew themselves. By the 1960s, they were mature enough that they were really turning out products that everyone wanted.

Mainstream economic models completely mishandle the birth and death of businesses. The assumption (usually unstated) is that businesses are born and die pretty much at the same rate in every decade. But that isn't true. Almost every business died, in one way or another, in the 1930s, and by the 1940s, almost all businesses were new. Those businesses grew and thrived in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today, those businesses are old and mature. The employees used to focus on producing the best products for the customer, but today the employees focus on doing as little work as possible while maintaining the most pleasant lifestyle. (See "Boomers and Gen-Xers: Dumbing down IT" for how this works in the computer industry.)

That's generally true of all the countries that fought in WW II as a crisis war. Their industries were all destroyed, and their businesses have gone through a similar birth and death cycle as the United States has.

Even China, for all its vaunted industrial strength, is unraveling. Its economy depends on manufacturing goods for sale in the US, and now the credit crisis in the US is also a credit crisis in China.

Of course, that isn't the way officials in Iraq and Iran look at the situation.

Taha Abdul-Salam, the head of Iraq's stock market, says, "I believe we're still far from what's happening in the world in the financial markets. But in the end you must know we are part of this world. I believe somehow we will have some problems."

At least he isn't too arrogant about what's going on. But that description doesn't apply to Iran

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is known to believe in the Mahdaviat of Shia Islam, the belief that the Mahdi is coming soon to save mankind.

Thus, it's not surprising that Ahmadinejad would see the financial crisis as a divine sign that "the oppressors and the corrupt will be replaced by the pious and believers," and that "an Islamic banking system will help us survive the current economic crisis."

In a recent sermon at Tehran University, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said, "We are happy that the U.S. economy has come across difficulty. They are attesting unfavorable consequences of their conducts. They are experiencing divine punishment. We are happy over that. The unhappier they become, the happier we get, as they become happy as we get unhappy."

We can't stop here without mentioning that while Ahmadinejad is waiting around for the Mahdi, he has plenty of troubles of his own. Those who remember America's Awakening era in the 1960s will recall that it was peppered with mass riots and demonstrations, and even violence and bombings.

Well, Ahmadinejad is beginning to have his own share of similar activities, typical of what happens in any country's Awakening era. Ahmadinejad has had student protests, and protests by women who wear loose headscarves.

So both Iran and Iraq are experiencing both the advantages and pains of an Awakening era, as most of the rest of the world, in a generational Crisis era, heads for a new world war. (17-Oct-2008) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 17-Oct-2008 Stock markets in Iraq and Iran are surging.

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 17-Oct-2008
Stock markets in Iraq and Iran are surging.