Generational Dynamics
	Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's
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Web Log - May, 2009

Massive refugee population swells as Pakistan claims Taliban near defeat

Doubts are being raised over Pakistan government claims that government troops will complete their operations against Taliban fighters in the Swat Valley within the next two or three days.

Northwest Pakistan (Source: BBC)

Secretary of Defense Syed Athar Ali said that only five or 10 percent of the operation remains incomplete. This comes a day after Pakistan's military says that they've have regained full control of Mingora from the Taliban, after dislodging thousands of Taliban militants. This is the biggest army victory since the Swat Valley offensive began a month ago.

Mingora is the biggest city in Swat Valley, and troops have been fighting street by street, house by house, watching for booby traps, with continued fighting in the suburbs.

However, BBC World News says the entire region has been devastated, and quotes a resident as saying that no more than 20 Taliban were killed, along with hundreds of civilians.

The Taliban have vowed revenge, and they've already carried out major acts of revenge. Earlier this week, a giant car bomb destroyed several buildings in Lahore, and this was followed by suicide bombing attacks in Peshawar.

Taliban leaders have warned that the terrorist revenge attacks are only going to get worse. A Taliban commander told Reuters, "We want the people of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Multan to leave those cities, as we plan major attacks against government facilities in coming days and weeks."

I guess this statement illustrates that some Taliban leaders have a sense of humor, but the real point is that those cities are all in Punjab province, largely populated by the Punjabi ethnic group. The army is made up mostly of Punjabis, while Swat Valley and the rest of Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) are populated mostly by those in the Pashtun ethnic group. Thus, the Taliban commander's threat is a hint of a Pashtun vs Punjabi ethnic war.

Even with all this going on, the whole situation might be classified simply as a large police action, if it weren't for the refugees -- now being euphemistically called "internally displaced people," or IDPs for short.

According to late reports, the number of IDPs now stands at 3.4 million. This is a figure that brings back memories of the massive genocidal war and refugee relocation that followed Partition, the 1947 partitioning of the Indian subcontinent that created the states of India and Pakistan. The scale of civilian displacement from their homes is so massive that it's being called by some as an "exodus of biblical proportions."

The complexity of the political situation is illustrated by the following report from Pakistan's Daily Times:

"The goods discovered at the Taliban headquarters for Swat included 12 UN-registered vehicles that the Taliban had snatched. There were the typical tunnels where the warlords hid when they were attacked with heavy fire. There was a madrassa complete with four tunnels for storing rations stolen from NGOs and a huge cache of arms. Unfortunately, this victory has come at the cost of over 2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs). The unfortunate dilemma, however, is that without this movement of people away from the battlefield, the victory over the Taliban would not have been possible.

Almost half the people of Malakand Division have fled their homes to enable the Pakistan Army to come in and kill over 1000 Taliban while suffering 80 soldiers dead in the fight in Lower Dir, Buner and Swat. The situation now faced by the country is no doubt grim but it could have been saved had the Musharraf regime decided in 2007 to stand up to the challenge of the terrorists. Even during 2008, the new civilian government dilly-dallied in the face of bad news from Swat and allowed the innocent Swatis to surrender their will to the Taliban.

Regrettably, those who supported the Taliban as “a legitimate reaction to the invasion of Afghanistan by America and Islamabad’s enslavement to American designs” have not given ground even after they were faced by a national consensus against the atrocities of the Taliban and their violation of the Nizam-e Adl accord. For instance, Ambassador Rustam Shah Mohmand insists that the report of the violation of the accord by the Taliban in Buner was actually an “exaggeration” on the part of the government: “But the fear of the Taliban taking control was so vociferously projected in the wake of two vehicles being driven into Buner by a few disorganised youths that it seemed like a deliberate move to create justification for a strong government intervention” (The News, May 30, 2009). The problem is that the resistance the army faced in Buner when it went in to clear the area could not have caused by “two vehicles being driven into Buner by a few disorganised youths”."

This report highlights many of the political issues in the current offensive:

• Until recently, the Pakistan people overwhelmingly blamed all terrorist violence in Pakistan on the American war in Afghanistan, and its support by the Pakistan governments first under Pervez Musharraf and now under Asif Ali Zardari.
• Those attitudes reversed themselves dramatically in recent weeks, after the Taliban violated a peace agreement they signed in February, and especially after a cell phone video began appearing on the internet of a 17 year old girl in Swat being publicly flogged by the Taliban for having had an affair. This video caused national revulsion among Pakistani people, who began to turn against the Taliban.
• Thus, the Pakistan population, including the IDPs, are overwhelmingly supporting of the Pakistan army offensive -- at this time.

I haven't seen this reported anywhere, but based on the words that I'm seeing, I get the feeling that Pakistani military officials are hoping to mimic the situation in Sri Lanka, but without all the civilian deaths. In Sri Lanka, the army managed to corner the Tamil Tiger militants and force them to surrender, effectively ending the Sri Lanka civil war.

But from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, any such comparison is faulty. It's precisely the horrific "genocidal fury" of the Sri Lanka civil war climax that is bringing about the current peace and recovery there. But the deference to civilian lives in the current Pakistan offensive only means that when the next round of fighting begins -- as it certainly will -- then each side will be more willing to kill civilians.

(See "Tamil Tigers renounce violence, to join Sri Lanka political process," and "Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Gaza are all following the same path.")

The Pakistan government claim that operations will be completed within the next two or three days is actually a very dangerous statement, because it raises hopes that will not be fulfilled. There is absolutely no possibility whatsoever that the crisis will end in any sense in a few days, or even a few months.

Let's look at two reasons why.

First, even if the army offensive miraculously completed its task, it would still take months or years for the 3.4 million IDPs to return to their homes and rebuild the many homes that have been destroyed. The International Committee of the Red Cross has called the refugee situation "dire," and expressed fears of a humanitarian crisis.

Second, the Taliban are not a static group of bandits like the Al Capone gang, that can be exterminated once and for all. This is a generational battle, and the Taliban are being fed a steady stream of new recruits by training thousands of young boys to become Islamist militants. (See "Is Pakistan's government close to total collapse?" for a Frontline video illustrating this.)

In an earlier article, I quoted a description of Taliban militants from a Time Magazine article as follows:

"It isn't hard to recognize a Pakistani Taliban fighter. Most of the thickly bearded men are barely in their 20s — members of a new and fiercer generation of jihadists. Their long black hair flows down past the shoulders on which they rest their rusty Kalashnikovs. Some wrap their heads in a black turban; others favor an embroidered red skull cap, modeled on the type worn by Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the militant leader killed during the army's high-profile siege of Islamabad's Red Mosque in July 2007. They shield their bodies with camouflage bulletproof vests, which usually have a grenade or two hanging from them. And under their hiked-up baggy trousers, all sport a pair of dirty white sneakers, with which they swagger menacingly around their freshly captured territory."

So there are Taliban leaders, most of whom will escape the army offensive. But then there are young kids playing with guns who are doing the actual fighting. No matter how many of these kids the army kills, there will always be more.

Right now, the army action is popular with the Pakistani people, but some chaotic event at any time could change that attitude overnight. When it's realized that the refugee situation is much worse than the army is saying, the Pashtuns may turn against the government or, more generally against the Punjabis. Or, some chaotic even may turn the entire population against the United States or India, risking a wider regional war. This kind of chaotic change in behavior can't be predicted, of course, but it's safe to say that with 3.4 million refugees, support for the army action is certain to change dramatically in some direction.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, a re-fighting of the massively genocidal war following the 1947 Partition that created India and Pakistan is coming with absolute certainty. The rapid escalation of the Pakistani civil war appears to bring re-fighting of the 1947 war much closer.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, as well as more frequent updates on this subject, see the Afghanistan, Pakistan and India thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (31-May-2009) Permanent Link
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Tamil Tigers renounce violence, to join Sri Lanka political process

New photos show "genocidal fury" at climax of civil war.

Scenes of devastation where hundreds of civilians were killed in the last weeks of the war. (Source: Straits Times / AFP)

In a telephone interview with the BBC, the Tamil Tigers' head of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, said, "We have already announced that we have given up violence and agreed to enter a democratic process to achieve the rights for the Tamil (self) determination of our people."

He added that Tamils all over the world should "restrain from harmful acts to themselves or anyone else in this hour of extreme grief."

This statement follows the visit to the war zone by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon last week, and the release of new photos showing the widespread devastation in the last months and weeks of the war.

The following AP video of Ban's visit shows more of the devastation:

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This increasing willingness to join a political process and avoid violence contradicts the expectations of analysts around the world who, for weeks, were predicting that the Tamil Tigers would continue a guerrilla war after the civil war ended.

However, this renunciation of violence, at least for a decade or two, is exactly what's predicted by Generational Dynamics when a generational crisis civil war ends, and a country transitions from a generational Crisis era (fourth turning) into a generational Recovery era (first turning). During a Recovery era, war is shunned, and is only pursued -- half-heartedly -- when political leaders demand it.

Once again, as has happened many times since I set up this web site almost seven years ago, Generational Dynamics has been proven to be correct, while the analysts have been proven wrong. (See "List of major Generational Dynamics predictions.") This is not because I have any psychic capability or political skills (I have none of either), but because the Generational Dynamics methodology works consistently.

The Sri Lanka civil war began in 1983, and followed pretty much the same series of steps that every generational crisis war follows. If you understand that series of steps, then you can understand almost any war, and you have the tools to make sensible comparisons between wars. Analysts in general do not understand or wish to acknowledge generational analyses of wars, and so their predictions are almost always wrong. (See "Sri Lanka crisis civil war nears climax, as army captures Mullaittivu" for a description of this pattern in the case of the Sri Lanka war.)

For example, I've heard some pundits compare the recent Sri Lanka fighting with the situation today in Pakistan's Swat Valley. There are, of course some superficial similarities, in particular with regard to having hundreds of thousands of refugees forced from their homes.

But Pakistan is still in the early stages of its war, and that war hasn't yet crossed the line into what I call "genocidal fury" -- the willingness to sacrifice hundreds or thousands of civilian lives in order to win the war once and for all.

In World War II, the Germans and the Japanese exhibited plenty of "genocidal fury," but so did the Allies. The Allies allowed tens of thousands of young American soldiers to be shot down like fish in a barrel on the beaches of Normandy, they firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, and they used nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities. This is what ALWAYS happens at the climax of a crisis war, even by the most benevolent of belligerents.

Pictures like the one shown above of the Sri Lanka war zone show that exactly the same kind of explosive climax, with "genocidal fury," occurred at the climax of the Sri Lanka crisis civil war. There was no firebombing involved, and there were no nuclear weapons, but the effect and the devastation were the same. Genocidal fury has nothing to do with the type of weapons used; it has to do with how human beings behave at the end of a crisis war.

After the war ends, all parties recoil in horror, not only at what they suffered, but also at what they did to make the other side suffer. Apologies are rarely issued by the politicians, but it's still this sense of shame at their own actions that is one of the primary motivations for the vow, by all survivors, that "nothing like that can ever be permitted to happen again," and why the survivors then devote their entire lives to making sure that it doesn't happen again. And that's why new rounds of "genocidal fury" never occur until most or all of those survivors are gone.

These are the factors that play in the generational analysis of wars, and these are the factors that the so-called "experts" always ignore in their analyses, which is why their analyses always turn out to be worth little more than the paper they're written on.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Sri Lanka crisis civil war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (25-May-2009) Permanent Link
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The inane style over substance debate over closing Guantanamo prison

We're seeing a new tv drama, "The education of Barack Obama."

In President Obama's speech on Thursday, he gave the principle reasons for closing the Guantánamo prison:

"There is also no question that Guantánamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al Qaeda that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law. In fact, part of the rationale for establishing Guantánamo in the first place was the misplaced notion that a prison there would be beyond the law -- a proposition that the Supreme Court soundly rejected. Meanwhile, instead of serving as a tool to counter terrorism, Guantánamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantánamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.

So the record is clear: Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantánamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies. It sets back the willingness of our allies to work with us in fighting an enemy that operates in scores of countries. By any measure, the costs of keeping it open far exceed the complications involved in closing it. That's why I argued that it should be closed throughout my campaign, and that is why I ordered it closed within one year."

This is a complete misreading of what's going on in the world. Al-Qaeda has been successfully recruiting for almost 30 years. Al-Qaeda has had many successes, in the form of numerous terrorist attacks in countries around the world. It's these successes, especially the 9/11/2001 attack on New York City, that are the most powerful recruiting tools for Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda's problem, at least with respect to the US, is that it hasn't had a successful terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

Thus, Al-Qaeda has been forced to seek other things as recruiting symbols.

The reason that Guantánamo is being used as a recruiting symbol by Islamist extremists is because they CHOSE to use it as a recruiting symbol. If it weren't for Guantánamo, then they would have chosen something else as a recruiting symbol.

For example, in January 2006, a Danish newspaper published some political cartoons featuring the Muslim prophet Mohammed. (See "Muslim world boycotts Danish goods over offensive cartoons" and "Cartoon controversy explodes into worldwide confrontations between Muslims and Westerners.")

The so-called "Danish cartoon controversy" has remained a powerful recruiting tool by Islamist extremists. It was just last month, that President Obama himself intervened in an EU dispute involving the Danish cartoon controversy.

Thus, the Danish cartoons will serve as recruiting tool for Islamist extremists as long as they want to use them. Islamists always have plenty of such tools to choose from. Judging from President Obama's speech, quoted above, Obama is completely oblivious to all of this.

Now let's assume that all the controversies are resolved, and Guantánamo is closed, after somehow convincing countries around the world to take them, and after tranferring a dozen or two of them to prisons in the US.

What would the Islamist extremists do? Would they say, "Gee, I'm so sad that we can't use Guantánamo as a recruiting symbol any more"?

Of course not. They would start using the US prisons as recruiting symbols. They would have their pick of which US prison or prisons they wish to use as recruiting symbols.

We would hear that "Muslim prisoners are worse off than they were at Guantánamo." We would hear, "Prison guards favor Christians over Muslims." We would have "humanitarian" groups around the world demanding to visit the terrorists in US prisons, so that they can make statements about inhumane treatment of Muslims in American prisoners.

If you believe that Guantánamo is a "recruiting tool" for terrorists, then you must also believe that US prisons would be similar "recruiting tools." Even worse, the US prisons may become recruiting tools for terrorists who would like target the prisons themselves for terrorist acts. A terrorist would find it much easier to target a US prison, than to overcome the physical barriers to targeting Guantánamo for a terrorist act.

So the closing of Guantánamo would not make any real difference, or may make things worse. It would be a victory of style over substance.

In fact, President Obama himself seemed to acknowledge that nothing was changing, when he said,

"I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people. Al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture -- like other prisoners of war -- must be prevented from attacking us again."

So they've changed their names from "terrorist detainees" to "prisoners of war."

President Obama has now been in office for over four months. Has anything of substance changed? I'm not aware of anything.

He's reserved the right to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" besides waterboarding, and there are many such techniques. He's reversed himself on releasing the prison photos that supposedly show Americans torturing Muslim prisoners. He's restored military tribunals, after previously saying that they must be eliminated. There are hints of delays in leaving Iraq.

President Obama claims that, "I'm guided by the facts, rather than ignoring them." He says that Bush did things for ideology, but he does things that work. He says that he's reaching decisions by deliberation, rather than by politics. He's being "pragmatic."

What we're now finding out that when President Bush did something, he was "evil" and "committing war crimes." When President Obama does exactly the same thing, he's being "pragmatic," because "it works."

But even the claim that "it works" cannot be supported, as the situation with Guantanamo illustrates. President Obama clearly believes that closing Guantanamo will remove it as an al-Qaeda "recruiting symbol," but it's apparently never even occurred to him that the new prison, holding Muslim "prisoners of war," would be a new "recruiting symbol," possibly more potent than Guantanamo.

During the campaign, and even after the election, Obama repeatedly stated that he would change the world when he took office on January 20.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this belief based on the naïveté of a Generation-X President Obama believing that everything that Boomers do is full of crap, and that by doing the opposite, all the world's problems could be solved. I first wrote about this over two years ago in, "Barack Obama to Boomers: Drop dead!" Since then, I've frequently written about the nihilism of Gen-Xers, and how Gen-X contempt for the values and accomplishments of their predecessors leads to their own self-destruction.

Neil Howe and his partner, the late William A. Strauss, the founding fathers of generational theory, examined the patterns of generational archetypes over six centuries. Of all the generational groups, the people of the Nomad archetype (Generation-X in modern America, the Lost Generation during and after World War I) were the group that were always the most bitter and angry during their old age.

Strauss and Howe report that this happens without really explaining why, but you can see it coming in the current Gen-Xers. The contempt for everything that came before, and the willingness to destroy it, leads nowhere but the self-destruction of the Gen-Xer institutions themselves. The coming financial crisis and world war are going to be blamed on the Gen-Xers, not the Boomers, and it's the Gen-Xers, in their elderhood, who will realize, with bitterness, that they have no one to blame but themselves.

It's interesting to contrast President Bush with President Obama at the start of their administrations.

President Bush frequently said that prior to 9/11, he really didn't know what he was supposed to do as President. After 9/11, he knew that God wanted him to devote his Presidency to responding to 9/11. That ended up being the only major objective of his Administration.

By contrast, President Obama had many, many objectives. He frequently said that the world would change on January 21. His goal was to heal the world with his mere presence -- cure global warming, provide universal health care, close Guantanamo, leave Iraq in peace, bring a two-state solution to Palestinians and Israelis, beat the Taliban in Afghanistan, restore the stock market bubble, and dismantle President Bush's war against terror. Nothing was beyond his reach.

It's the utter absurdity of this program that makes it nihilistic. Almost nothing of this program will be accomplished. Instead, the only accomplishments will be to tear down the accomplishments of previous administrations.

Bush's undeniable accomplishment is that he implemented measures that prevented a new terrorist attack on American soil. Instead of regarding that as a remarkable achievement, to be praised and emulated, Obama and other Gen-Xers are treating it as "evil" and a "war crime." This is the major example today of Gen-X contempt for the accomplishments of the previous generation, and the willingness to destroy previous accomplishments for reasons of style and politics. Dismantling President Bush's war against terror will only make it harder for the US to survive in the coming crisis wars.

If this happens, it would be similar to carelessness among the Lost Generation that permitted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to destroy most of America's Pacific fleet in 1941. This was the greatest military disaster in American history, and led many Americans to fear, and many Japanese to hope, that Japan would defeat the United States.

Sooner or later the tv drama series, "The Education of Barack Obama" is going to have an episode with a real disaster. It can't be predicted what that episode will be -- a stock market crash, a new terrorist attack on American soil, or a major military defeat overseas are possibilities -- but Generational Dynamics predicts that something like that is going to happen in this generational Crisis era. Nor can we predict how much it will cost the United States in terms of ability to survive the coming world war.

At that point, President Obama will learn that simple aphorisms and polyannish wishes have little or nothing to do with what happens in the real world.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the President Barack Obama thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (25-May-2009) Permanent Link
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Laszlo Birinyi provides insight on his fantasy price/earnings computations

These are the figures published by the Wall Street Journal.

A month ago, in "Wall Street Journal and Birinyi Associates are lying about P/E ratios," I described how WSJ was publishing price/earnings ratio figures provided by Birinyi Associates, and that these figures were simply fantasies unsupported by anyone else, including the "official" analyst estimates in the Standard & Poors earnings spreadsheet.

I quoted the Birinyi Associates web site, which begins with, "Our approach is to understand the psychology and the history of the market."

Well, Laszlo Birinyi was interviewed on Bloomberg tv on Wednesday, and this is what he said (my transcription):

"I'm more optimistic on the economy than most people, because of the surge in the last couple of weeks.

If you look at the comments [by analysts], I'm not sure whether they're expecting inflation or deflation. It always goes back and forth.

My solution is to look at the markets, and not to be concerned with peripheral issues, because they drive you crazy.

Laszlo Birinyi, Birinyi Assocates - president (Source: Bloomberg)

The markets have been acting pretty well. And they were acting pretty well on Monday when we got a big surprise. The markets are much more confident about the outlook than anybody else is.

I've done better listening to the markets than listening to the [analyst] comments. ...

Money flows tell me that people want to keep buying. About 70% of the gains in this rally have occurred in the last hour of trading every day. That tells me that people want to get back in, and when the market starts to do a little better then they rush back in. That's why we've been seeing these strong afternoon rallies. So I think there's still an awful lot of money that needs to be deployed into stocks, and the alternatives are not too exciting. ...

There are technical measures you can use, but the problem is that people use technical measures for predicting things, instead of understanding things.

When you take your blood pressure, whether it's high or low, it doesn't necessarily tell you anything about your health going out six months. We use a variety of indicators such as moving averages to sort of give us some help. But if you don't try to do more with them than they're meant to do, then you won't get in trouble. Where people have problems is when they try to predict what's going to happen with the levels, and so forth.

So we have found, for example, that the spread between the 50 day moving average and the stock price is a pretty good indicator. So we're focusing more on technical and market approaches than we are on fundamentals.

The VIX is very mixed [in value as a technical indicator]. It hasn't had a very good record recently, and we've found that it gives off too many false signals, and furthermore we're more interested in individual stocks. This is a market where you have to pick stocks. So these macro items are as big in our process as they might have been five years ago. ...

We're confident we're in a bull market, and when you look at the historical perspective, we think this market will go to 1500 or 1700 on the S&P over the next 2-3 years. It's not going to be a straight line, and it's not necessarily a prediction that I wouldn't want to update on occassion, but for some sort of a parameter or game plan going forward, that works. ...

[Unemployment figures are not useful as technical indicators.] These numbers change so much. We used to have just the government unemployment. Now we have ADP unemployment, and sometimes those numbers are in contrast. ...

[Retail sales figures are not useful as technical indicators.] It was interesting in the last week to see the market reacted very negatively to retail sales numbers. But those retail sales numbers came out of the government, and they're very much in contrast to retal sales numbers that came out of the companies, out of the stores. There's a big difference there, and I suspect that what you're going to see is that the retail sales on the government side are going to improve dramatically next month, because the company's aren't performing anywhere near those deficiencies or defects."

This has got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. If it weren't for the fact that this guy's fantasy price/earnings computations are republished by the Wall Street Journal, what he just said would be rejected as the rantings of a nut.

Let's summarize some of salient points he made:

• He doesn't care about deflation or inflation.
• He doesn't think that high blood pressure tells you anything about your future health.
• The VIX isn't useful, because it sends "false signals," that is, signals that he doesn't agree with. The VIX measures stock market volatility, and a high VIX often precedes a major stock market correction.
• Unemployment figures are not useful because there are two sets of them (provided by the government and by ADP).
• Retail sales figures are not useful, once again because there are multiple sources.
• We know that he doesn't think that reported corporate earnings are useful, because he's made up a fantasy earnings computation for his price/earnings ratio.
• The only thing that matters to him is his reading of the "psychology of the market."

This is the damnedest thing, and it represents the epitome of the craziness that we're seeing today.

At its core is the view that stocks have no fundamental or intrinsic values. Their values are simply determined by whatever investors will pay.

He says that the market is going to continue to surge to S&P 1500-1700 in the next 2-3 years (roughly equivalent to Dow 15000-17000). Why not 20,000? Why not 100,000? Why not 1,000,000?

As I've written many times in the last seven years, most recently last week, stocks do have a fundamental intrisic value, determined by reported corporate earnings. (See "How to compute the 'real value' of the stock market.")

The current surge is a "bear market rally." The stock market fell 90% from 1929 to 1932, and in that period there were several rallies that were larger than the current one. So the current rally is not exceptional or unusual, and it does not indicate in any way that a bottom has been reached.

People like Birinyi are leading the way to what I've frequently described as "The Principle of Maximum Ruin," which means that the maximum number of people are going to be ruined in the maximum amount possible. That's what happened in 1929, and that's what's happening today.

I've quoted this passage from John Kenneth Galbraith's 1954 book The Great Crash - 1929 many times, but you can't read it too often. It describes how the "Principle of Maximum Ruin" played out in 1929:

"A common feature of all these earlier troubles [previous panics] was that having happened they were over. The worst was reasonably recognizable as such. The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few as possible escaped the common misfortune.

The fortunate speculator who had funds to answer the first margin call presently got another and equally urgent one, and if he met that there would still be another. In the end all the money he had was extracted from him and lost. The man with the smart money, who was safely out of the market when the first crash came, naturally went back in to pick up bargains. ... The bargains then suffered a ruinous fall. Even the man who waited out all of October and all of November, who saw the volume of trading return to normal and saw Wall Street become as placid as a produce market, and who then bought common stocks would see their value drop to a third or fourth of the purchase price in the next twenty-four months. ... The ruthlessness of [the stock market was] remarkable." (p. 108)

Anyone who listens to Birinyi and people like him are going to learn for themselves how ruthless the stock market is, just as people did after the 1929 crash.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Financial Topics thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Read the entire thread for discussions on how to protect your money.) (22-May-2009) Permanent Link
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Jubilant Sri Lanka celebrates, as President reaches out to the Tamils

But President Rajapaksa will need to follow words with actions.

This is a very exciting moment for Generational Dynamics, for a couple of reasons.

The main reason is that, right before our eyes, we're seeing a country make the transition from a Crisis war and Crisis era (fourth turning) into a Recovery era (first turning). These moments are quite rare. There were a couple of them in the 1990s, but I wasn't paying attention. I'm certainly paying attention this time.

As I've written several times, the end of the Sri Lanka crisis civil war is no ordinary peace agreement. It's the climax of a generational crisis civil war and, as such, it's equivalent to the surrender of Germany or Japan in WW II, or the surrender of the South in America's Civil War. There may still be occasional "renegade" acts of violence, but there's no question that the war is over.

We're now seeing Sri Lanka move quickly in a new direction -- from being a divided nation with two warring ethnic groups (majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils) into a country healing itself, reconstructing itself, bringing the two ethnic groups together.

The most important component is that the victors (the Sinhalese) must be "generous in victory." The first step was the victory speech to Parliament, given by President Mahinda Rajapaksa. He began the speech as follows:

"I address this session of Parliament at the historic occasion when the hopes and expectations of the Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, Burgher, Malay and all people of our country for several decades, to see a Sri Lanka that is free of murderous terrorism, have been realized."

He then spoke in the Tamil language:

"Friends,

This is our country.

This is our mother land.

We should live in this country as children of one mother.

No differences of race, caste and religion should prevail here.

Over the last thirty years, the LTTE has killed many people Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslims - many have been killed.

The war against the LTTE is not a war against Tamil people.

Our aim was to liberate our Tamil people from the clutches of the LTTE.

Our heroic forces have sacrificed their lives to protect Tamil civilians.

The victory we have gained by defeating LTTE is the victory of this nation, and the victory of all people living in this country.

Protecting the Tamil speaking people of this country is my responsibility.

That is my duty.

All the people of this country should live in safety without fear and suspicion.

All should live with equal rights.

That is my aim.

Let us all get together and build up this nation."

The full speech is loaded with references to Tamil history and Sri Lankan history, and is well worth reading in its entirely for those who are interested in such things.

Speaking in Tamil has great symbolism, but what's needed now is to go beyond words. Rajapaksa will have to show that the Tamils will share government with the Sinhalese, that the Tamils will be treated equally, that the tens of thousands of Tamils living in refugee camps will be quickly given homes.

Right now, every day, every hour, every minute counts. If several days go by with no action, then the Tamils will conclude that they'll continue to be an oppressed minority. On the other hand, quick action right now can convince Tamils that they have a chance for equal opportunity in a Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka.

This is nothing new -- it's happened at the climax of every crisis civil war in every society in history. In each of those wars, the survivors, both the winners and the losers, decide that the war was so horrible that they must never let it happen again. Their children, however, feel no such horror, and so when the survivors are finally gone, their children and grandchildren have another horrible war, usually 80 or so years later. That's how the generational cycle repeats itself.

I mentioned that there are two reasons why this is an exciting moment for Generational Dynamics. The second reason is that this is good news. Almost all the Generational Dynamics predictions that I write about on this web site are horrible news -- a new Great Depression and a new world war. (Incidentally, those of you who have been lured back into the stock market by the surges in the last day or two are going to lose a lot of money.)

But this is really good news, for a change. Sri Lanka is, in a real sense, a brand new country. Just as a newborn baby can bring joy to its parents, at least for a while, the world can enjoy the birth of a new country at peace, at least for a while.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Sri Lanka crisis civil war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (20-May-2009) Permanent Link
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Tamil Tigers surrender, ending the Sri Lanka crisis civil war

"We have decided to silence our guns. Our only regrets are for the lives lost and that we could not hold out for longer. We can no longer bear to see the innocent blood of our people being spilled."

With this dramatic statement from Tamil Tiger PR chief Selvarasa Pathmanathan, appearing on the TamilNet web site, the Sri Lanka civil war is coming to an end.

The Tamil Tigers, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), have been fighting a civil war for a Tamil homeland ("Tamil Eelam") for 26 years. The war turned into a generational Crisis civil war early in 2008. (See "Sri Lanka government declares all out war against Tamil Tiger rebels.")

(Please download and read the new article (PDF file), "International business forecasting using System Dynamics with generational flows."

This paper brings several articles together in one place and updates many other materials from this web site, including the application of Systems Dynamics and Chaos Theory, and the history and basics of generational theory. It shows how Generational Dynamics can be used by commercial and government organizations to forecast developments in foreign countries.)

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The surrender, which brought cheers and celebrations in Colombo, the nation's capital, came after the Sri Lankan army announced that it had freed all of the 50,000 Tamil civilians that the UN estimated were trapped within the LTTE militants in the so-called "safe zone," which has been the scene of massive slaughter in recent weeks. Government forces had encircled the rebels and cut them off from the sea yesterday, taking control of the entire island’s coast for the first time, cutting off the militants' last escape route. The remaining militants are are holed up in a small patch of jungle, according to government sources.

As I wrote last week in, "Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Gaza are all following the same path," this surrender is nothing like the numerous failed "peace agreements" that have been signed over the years.

This is the climax of a generational Crisis war, and so this surrender is comparable to the surrender of the Germans and Japanese in 1945, ending World War II, or the surrender of the Confederacy, ending the American Civil War in 1865.

The next few days and weeks are very critical to the future of Sri Lanka as a nation. (See discussion of "Pólya's Urn" in "Generational Dynamics forecasting methodology.") What the government does in the next few days will affect every aspect of Sri Lankan society for decades to come.

Here are some things to watch for in the coming weeks:

• What will happen to the tens of thousands of refugees currently in refugee camps, including thousands who are sick and wounded? The government's attitude toward the displaced Tamils, and to the Tamil population in general, will greatly affect how the Tamils view the government and the Sinhalese majority in the future.
• What will Sri Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapaksa say when he delivers his victory speech to the nation in a day or two?
• What is the fate of Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the original LTTE founder and leader, who has been leading the militant forces for decades? His location is unknown, and it's been reported that he's ordered his bodyguards to kill him and burn his body if he is near capture. (This would be reminiscent of Hitler's suicide in his Berlin bunker in 1945.)
• Will the government announce a reconstruction plan, something like the "Marshall Plan" for Europe that followed WW II, or the Reconstruction era that followed America's Civil War?
• Pro-Tamil groups and foundations around the world have been funding the LTTE war efforts. How will they react to the LTTE surrender, and will they make a commitment to the peace?

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is a very special time for Sri Lanka. With the end of this Crisis civil war, it's almost literally the birth of a new society and a new nation. In the next few days and weeks, we'll see what kind of society and nation is formed.

The following is the full statement of surrender appearing on the TamilNet web site:

Dignity and respect for our people is all we ask – Pathmanathan

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 May 2009, 08:22 GMT]

“Despite our plea to the world to save the thousands of people in Vanni from the clutches of death, the silence of the international community has only encouraged the Sri Lankan military to execute the war to its bitter end. In the past 24 hours, over 3000 civilians lie dead on the streets while another 25,000 are critically injured with no medical attention. To save the lives of our people is the need of the hour. Mindful of this, we have already announced to the world our position to silence our guns to save our people," Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the head of LTTE’s International Diplomatic Relations has said in an urgent statement issued Sunday.

"This we have appealed to the countries of the world and called on them to halt the unrelenting massacre of our people by the Sri Lankan armed machinery. We are extremely saddened that this plea has fallen on deaf ears”, Mr Pathmanathan further said as he desperately called on the International Community to take immediate actions to save the Tamil people caught in the war zone and take necessary actions to protect the cadres and people giving themselves up to the military.

“This battle has reached its bitter end. Against all odds, we have held back the advancing Sinhalese forces without help or support, except for the unending support of our people. It is our people who are dying now from bombs, shells, illness and hunger. We cannot permit any more harm to befall them. We remain with one last choice – to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns. Our only regrets are for the lives lost and that we could not hold out for longer. We can no longer bear to see the innocent blood of our people being spilled," Mr. Pathmanathan said.

The LTTE had for almost three decades fought the Sri Lankan military and defended its right to carry arms as a means of protecting the Tamil people living in the island. After unilaterally walking away from the Peace Process that began in 2002 with Norwegian facilitation, The Sri Lankan Government had opted for a military solution to end the crisis. Since the war intensified in 2007, several thousand Tamil civilians have died. The recent thrust by the military into the Northern strong holds of the Tamils have seen an escalation in the deaths and has resulted in untold misery with people succumbing to starvation and lack of medical supplies.

“We need to do everything within our means to stop this carnage. If this means silencing our arms and entering a peace process, that is something that we have already agreed to,” said Mr Pathamanathan. “This is the need of the hour. These are historically unprecedented times and require historically prudent decisions. If this means saving the lives of thousands of people, it needs to be done” he stated.

Mr Pathamanathan further stated that, “There is not a person who can doubt the LTTEs fearless and unending commitment to this cause with which we have been entrusted by our people. Know that the Tamils are a people deeply rooted in culture and history. No force can prevent the attainment of justice for our people. Our sons and daughters have taken up this call without question and without hesitation or fear of death. None have hesitated to make the supreme sacrifice for the cause of liberating their motherland. We have not forgotten that it is for our people that we fight. In the face of the current conditions, we will no longer permit this battle to be used as a justification by the forces of the Sinhala state to kill our people. We willingly stand up with courage and silence our guns. We have no other option other than to continue our plea to the international community to save our people”.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Sri Lanka crisis civil war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (17-May-2009) Permanent Link
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With over a million refugees, Pakistan is close to full-scale civil war.

A BBC study has found extensive Taliban control of Northwest Frontier Province.

Pakistan's FATA and Northwest Frontier Province - government vs Taliban controlled districts (Source: BBC)

The adjoining map is the result of a BBC study that shows that only 40% of NWFP is still under government control, while the Taliban has partial or full control of the other 60%.

The portion of the map on the left (from Bajaur district on the top down to South Waziristan district at the bottom) is Pakistan's FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas).

Up until a year or two ago, the Taliban presence was only being felt in the FATA, but in the last couple of years, the Taliban have extended their control throughout the NWFP, as shown on the map.

It's hard to believe that Swat Valley was, until a couple of years ago, a posh ski resort that vacationers visited from around the world. Today it's been practically destroyed by the Taliban.

In February, the Pakistan government essentially capitulated to the Taliban, by signing a "peace agreement" giving the Taliban control of Swat Valley, in return for the Taliban laying down their arms. Of course, the Taliban did not lay down their arms, but instead used the "peace" as an opportunity to take control of Lower Dir and Buner districts, the latter very close to Islamabad.

Early this month, the Pakistan army opened an offensive to drive the Taliban out of Lower Dir and Buner.

In the last few days, this offensive has extended far into Swat. The fighting has caused 1 to 1.5 million refugees to flee their homes, running to government-supplied refugee camps.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, when you have a civil war with over a million refugees, then the war is very close to crossing a line to a full-scale crisis war.

The "optimistic view," being promoted by the Pakistan government, is that the Taliban will be defeated quickly, allowing people to return to their homes. I'll believe that when I see it.

What appears to be happening is that the civil war is escalating quickly. Things could blow up very quickly in scenarios that can't currently be predicted.

The most dangerous scenarios involve intervention by either India or the US. This might happen if, for example, it is feared that Taliban might gain control of Pakistan's nuclear materials or weapons.

Official map of Pakistan, with the addition of the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas), highlighting Swat Valley (Source: pakistan.gov.pk)

The civil war brings two ethnic groups into conflict. The army is largely Punjabi, while the Taliban are Pashtuns who have adopted Islamist terror tactics. Most of the refugees are also Pashtuns. The Punjabis make up 45% of Pakistan's population, while the Pashtuns make up 15%. Both of these groups are Sunni Muslim.

If India or the US intervened on Pakistani soil, it's quite likely that the Punjabis and the Pashtuns would stop fighting each other, and would unite to fight the invaders.

The Sindhis make up 14% of Pakistan's population, and they're Shia Muslim, historically aligned in wars with the Hindus against the Sunni Muslims.

We can't predict what scenario this increasingly dangerous civil war will follow, but we can see many possibilities involving these different ethnic groups.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, a re-fighting of the massively genocidal war following the 1947 Partition that created India and Pakistan is coming with absolute certainty. The rapid escalation of the Pakistani civil war appears to bring re-fighting of the 1947 war much closer.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, as well as more frequent updates on this subject, see the Afghanistan, Pakistan and India thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (16-May-2009) Permanent Link
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Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Gaza are all following the same path.

But the end is in sight for Sri Lanka.

In Sri Lanka, an artillery barrage on a supposed "safe zone" have killed more this 378 civilians, in the bloodiest weekend of the civil war. Government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels blamed each other for the massacre.

In Pakistan's Swat Valley, hundreds of thousands of civilians and their families are fleeing toward government-provided refugee camps, as the army prepares for a major assault on the Taliban. The army claims that hundreds of militants were killed this weekend, but humanitarian groups are warning of a potential humanitarian disaster.

In Gaza, Hamas has agreed to resume talks in an Egyptian-led cease-fire agreement with Israel and Fatah.

Each of these three regions is in the end game of very similar asymmetric wars. In each case, there's a powerful government army (Israel, Pakistan, Sri Lanka) fighting rebels/militants (Hamas, Taliban, Tamil Tigers). In each case, the militants are using civilians as human shields, and even firing at civilians to prevent their escape. In each case, the conventional army is trying to kill the militants, while harming as few civilians as possible. In each case, the government is becoming more and more willing to kill civilians, if that's what's required to kill the militants.

Each of the wars is proceeding along similar timelines. From a low-level conflict beginning in the 1970s or 1980s, the war has flip-flopped between periods of violence and peace agreements. Each new round of violence has been more genocidal that the previous one.

The Gaza and Pakistan wars have not yet crossed the line into full-scale crisis warfare. However, this could happen at any time in either country.

But Sri Lanka is the farthest along of the three countries, having crossed into full-scale warfare in January of last year. (See "Sri Lanka government declares all out war against Tamil Tiger rebels.") The Sri Lanka civil war is in the midst of an explosive climax, and it appears likely that the government forces will defeat the Tamil Tiger rebels in the next few weeks.

But what happens next? What will happen to Sri Lanka when the war is over?

In an article by the Stratfor analyst group entitled "The Conflict in Sri Lanka: A Cornered Tiger Is Still Deadly," the authors write as follows:

"As STRATFOR has previously noted, if Sri Lankan troops manage to crush the remnants of the Tigers’ hard-pressed conventional military forces, the Tigers will have little choice but to give up on conventional warfare (at least for the time being). But the Tigers’ separatist struggle is more than 30 years old and has been marked by great brutality on both sides. Because of this, there is very little chance the Tigers will simply accept defeat and fade into history. Instead, now that the government has the military advantage, the Tigers can be expected to continue their war against the government by melting back into the populace and resorting to guerrilla tactics and terrorism."

The Stratfor analysis provides a wealth of valuable information, but the conclusions are wrong.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, what we're going to see when the war ends is quite different. In particular, the Tigers will indeed be forced to accept defeat.

This is one of the only two "generational crisis wars" going on in the world today. (The other one is in Darfur.) Every generational crisis war has an "explosive climax," and Sri Lanka is in the midst of its climax right now.

This is not just another battle victory. It's a seminal moment in Sri Lankan history. The current situation is so horrible that peace will be accepted by both Tamils and Sinhalese. The Tigers will not be able to continue terrorist acts, because the Tamils won't allow it. A peace treaty will be signed, and both sides will live in peace -- for a decade or two, anyway.

In their 1997 book, The Fourth Turning, the founding fathers of generational theory, Neil Howe and his partner, the late William A. Strauss, described what happens (pp. 258-59):

"The Crisis climax is human history's equivalent to nature's raging typhoon, the kind that sucks all surrounding matter into a single swirl of ferocious energy. Anything not lashed down goes flying; anything standing in the way gets flattened. Normally occurring late in the Fourth Turning, the climax gathers energy from an accumulation of unmet needs, unpaid bills, and unresolved problems. It then spends that energy on an upheaval whose direction and dimension were beyond comprehension during the prior Unraveling era. The climax shakes a society to its roots, transforms its institutions, redirects its purposes, and marks its people (and its generations) for life. The climax can end in triumph, or tragedy, or some combination of both. Whatever the event and whatever the outcome, a society passes through a great gate of history, fundamentally altering the course of civilization.

Soon thereafter, this great gate is sealed by the Crisis resolution, when victors are rewarded and enemies punished; when empires or nations are forged or destroyed; when treaties are signed and boundaries redrawn; and when peace is accepted, troops repatriated, and life begun anew.

One large chapter of history ends, and another starts. In a very real sense, one society dies -- and another is born."

For historical analogies, think of the collapse of Berlin in 1945, or Japan's surrender after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Gaza and Pakistan are still some time away from that kind of ending, but this is the kind of future that awaits Sri Lanka, once the current horror ends and a peace is imposed.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Sri Lanka crisis civil war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (11-May-2009) Permanent Link
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Stock market rally raises cautious, anxious hope among investors.

The question is: Why is it happening, and how long will it last?

A couple of people have told me that they don't want to talk about the stock market rally, and they aren't even checking stock prices any more. From what I can tell, they're afraid that by checking the stock prices, they'll jinx the rally.

That's little different from what I hear on CNBC and Bloomberg tv. The financial statistics are universally disastrous, but no matter what they are, the tv analysts dig through them desperately to find some "green shoot" that will indicate that the worst is over.

There are two things you should keep in mind about the current rally:

• A rally of this size in the midst of a calamitous stock market plunge is not unusual. As I wrote six weeks ago in "Enquiring minds want to know: How long will the rally last?", the stock market fell a full 90% from its peak in the years 1929-1932. During those three years, there were six rallies, including one 49% rally that lasted five months. So the current rally means nothing in terms of the overall direction of the market and the economy.
• The predictions and analyses made on this web site are not based on just one or two months of data; they're based on long-term trends going back years and decades. I started writing in 2002 that we were headed for a new 1930s style Great Depression. That was based on the fact that the stock market was historically overpriced. (See "How to compute the 'real value' of the stock market.") The stock market is still overpriced by a factor of 150%. Price/earnings ratios have still been well above historical norms since 1995. The Law of Mean Reversion has not been repealed, and it means that a crash is coming with absolutely certainty.

Still, even though this rally is unimportant in terms of the longer term trend, we still want to know why it's occurring, and how long it will last. The answer to this question would have to be speculation, so let's speculate.

Based on what I've heard on CNBC and Bloomberg and elsewhere it appears to me that the pundits and analysts -- the ones who make fat commissions by investing other people's money -- have put together a "story" to justify continuing to collect their commissions.

I've heard several analysts/pundits make remarks about Q3 corporate earnings to the following effect: Investors expect Q3 earnings to grow substantially compared to last year.

It's worthwhile putting this in context. Ever since the credit crunch began in August, 2007, pundits have been predicting saying that "a bottom has been reached" on almost a daily basis. The slightest piece of good news is enough for the pundits to claim that the worst is over, and for web site readers to write to me and say, "See? You're wrong. The worst is over."

In particular, as earnings have fallen, quarter after quarter, pundits have been claiming that a revival of bubble-level earnings growth is only two quarters away. They make that claim every quarter. At the beginning of 2008, pundits were claiming that earnings would explode upward in the last two quarters. Now the same thing is happening in 2009.

So let's refer to the Standard & Poors earnings spreadsheet and see what the "official" analyst estimates are. Here's the table:

            Corporate earnings per share (EPS)
                 2008 (actual) 2009 (est)
          --   --------------- ----------
          Q1    $15.54         $7.32
          Q2    $12.86         $6.64
          Q3     $9.73         $7.46
          Q4   -$23.25         $7.09

Of the 2009 figures, the Q1 actuals are almost all in, so $7.32 is probably correct. The $6.64 estimate for Q2 is based on "guidance" provide by the companies along with their earnings reports, so these should be reasonably accurate.

After that, it's really guesswork, but even so, Q3 estimates are sharply lower than Q3 actuals for 2008.

If you add together the four quarterly figures for 2008, you get (-23.25 + 9.73 + 12.86 + 15.54) = $14.88, the total S&P 500 earnings per share (EPS) for the entire year 2008. At the current S&P 500 index of about 930, the current price/earnings ratio is thus 930/14.88 = 62.

As I wrote last month in "Wall Street Journal and Birinyi Associates are lying about P/E ratios," the official P/E is indeed around 60, and is being reported as such by Standard & Poors and by other mainstream financial firms. WSJ and Birinyi were reporting P/E = 13.09. The WSJ web site is now reporting 15.08, a mysterious figure that makes no more sense than the 13.09 figure.

Now let's turn that computation around, to estimate what we can expect from the stock market this year, based on the S&P figures.

If you add together the four quarterly estimates for 2009, you get (7.32 + 6.64 + 7.46 + 7.09) = $28.51. These earnings estimates are almost double the actuals for 2008, though still way below the $60-80 earnings per share typical of the bubble years.

At $28.51 earnings per share for 2009, if we assume the fantasy P/E ratio of 15 published by WSJ, then we get that the S&P 500 index this year will be (28.51 x 15) = 430, corresponding roughly to a Dow Industrials index of 4300. Thus, based on actual, official figures, we can expect the market this year to fall well below Dow 5000.

The Pollyannaish "story" being painted by the commission-earning brokers and analysts is based on general euphoria from the Obama administration's fiscal stimulus package, together with a few well-publicized cases where actual earnings turned out to be slightly less disastrous than analysts had previously predicted.

This "story" will serve the commission-earning brokers and analysts well, and will permit them to earn fat commissions for at least another quarter. When Q3 earnings start coming in, then they'll have to come up with a new "story" to continue earning commissions for another quarter. That will undoubtedly include a promise that earnings rebounds are still just two quarters in the future, and that you should buy stocks today to get in on the ground floor.

It's worth remembering, Dear Reader, that the same lethal combination of nihilistic Gen-Xers and incompetent Boomers that committed the fraud that led to the current financial crisis are the same people that you hear today on CNBC and Bloomberg tv or, for that matter, in the Obama administration. These include "brilliant" Nobel prize-winning economists like Krugman and Stiglitz. They're EXACTLY the same people, and their only motivations are to continuing collecting commissions and to make sure that someone else is blamed for their own crimes and their own complicity. None of them gives a sh-t about the ordinary investor. They're just in it for themselves.

So if you're happy with those people, and with their performance in the past, then you should continue believing them. After all, if you ever start to question their motives, then you might jinx the rally.

There's another very important aspect to all of this.

I heard an analyst on tv say that "capitulation hasn't occurred yet," referring to the fact that most money market funds haven't yet been sold off. According to this analyst, the bear market won't really end until we've seen true capitulation, including panicked selling of money market funds.

This refers to the hare-brained capitulation fallacy that I wrote about last year. Analysts used to talk about capitulation all the time last year, but they all expected it to have occurred long before now, so they've stopped talking about it. This analyst is saying that just because it hasn't occurred yet doesn't mean it won't occur, and that it has to occur for a "true" market rally to occur.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this kind of panicked "capitulation" is important as well, but for a different reason and with different consequences.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, we're still waiting for a generational stock market crash, a huge, massive panicked selloff that will be remembered for decades as "the day the stock market crashed."

At first this will appear to be the "capitulation" that pundits have been hoping for. But it will go far deeper than expected, and it won't signal a new bubble stock market. Instead, the stock market will continue to fall, just as it did in the 1929-1932 period.

In August 2007 I posted the article "The nightmare is finally beginning," expecting the crash to occur within a few weeks. Instead, the Fed and Treasury have found a way to use one "liquidity injection" after another to prop up some financial institution, in order to head off a chain reaction.

Throughout all this time, there was one statistic that I could count on to predict where the market was going in the short range: The P/E ratio -- I mean the "real" P/E ratio, as shown in the chart on the bottom of the home page of this web site. Here's a recent edition:

S&P 500 Price/Earnings ratio and S&P 500-stock Index as of 17-Apr-2009. (Source: MarketGauge ® by DataView, LLC)

If you look at the far right side of this chart, where the red circle is, you can see a huge spike in the last weeks, sending the P/E ratio off the chart, to around 60.

As you can see from this chart, the P/E ratio stayed at 18 for almost 4 years, from which I inferred that computerized buy/sell programs were programmed to maintain that valuation. Not that there was some conspiracy going on, but that they had all been programmed with roughly the same algorithms, one of which was to honor the valuation of 18.

A year ago, valuations started rising into the mid-20s, and I was expecting them to fall to 18 again -- and they did in September of last year. That made sense to me.

But I never, NEVER dreamed that what's happening now could happen -- starting in January, as Q4's negative earnings were coming out, the P/E ratio indexes shot up to 60, and then the whole fabric of lying and deception began, as I described in "Wall Street Journal and Birinyi Associates are lying about P/E ratios."

What I infer is this: That this change has caused all the buy/sell programs to be reprogrammed to ignore the real P/E and use the Ouija board version computed by Birinyi Associates and published by WSJ. This was done by brokerage firms to protect their commissions, so that they could continue suckering ordinary investors.

This insanity is so great that it's hard for the mind to grasp. The way I look at it is that it's like stretching a rubber band to its limit, and when it snaps back, it will snap back much faster and harder than it would have otherwise.

Stein's Law: If something cannot go on forever, then it won't.

I know I keep saying this, but I just can't believe what's going on in Washington and on Wall Street. Even as cynical as I am about the lethal combination of Gen-Xers and Boomers, there is absolutely nothing in my experience that prepares me for this and allows it to make sense to me. If this were happening in a movie, I could enjoy it. But in real life, things are spinning so rapidly out of control that it makes me literally dizzy and sick when I think about it.

And so, Dear Reader, if you plan to stay in the stock market because your assets had lost over 50% of their peak value, and now are down only 40% of their peak value, then let me assure you that this current rally is a "bear market rally." It is nothing unusual in times of severe market plunges, and it means nothing in the longer term. Furthermore, P/E ratios are still astronomically high, and have been far above historical averages since 1995. Much worse is yet to come.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Financial Topics thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Read the entire thread for discussions on how to protect your money.) (9-May-2009) Permanent Link
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Hundreds of thousands of refugees flee as Pakistan's civil war expands

The army is massing for a bloody battle in Swat Valley.

Government forces have urged civilians to leave Swat Valley for camps set up for 500,000 refugees. February's so-called "peace agreement" that the Pakistan government signed with the Taliban February, giving the Taliban almost complete control of Swat, has collapsed.

The fighting in Swat Valley was bad enough before the February agreement, but it's expected to be much worse now, as the Taliban have had an opportunity to consolidate and rearm.

In Generational Dynamics, a "regeneracy event" is something that polarizes the civilians, and unifies each for war against the other, thus "regenerating" civic unity for the first time since the end of the previous crisis war.

The Pakistanis have been living in a state of pollyanish denial about the threat from the Taliban for a long time, but two recent "regeneracy events" have shaken them to the point where they're increasingly prepared for war:

• Early in April, a 17 year old girl in Swat was publicly flogged for having had an affair. The flogging was captured on a cell phone video:

  This video caused national revulsion among Pakistani people, who began to turn against the Taliban.

• Instead of honoring the "peace agreement," the Taliban militants expanded their region of control, moving toward Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

  Northwest Pakistan (Source: BBC)

  Previously, the people in Islamabad, and throughout the populous Punjab province, had considered the war with the Taliban to be a distant war being fought between Muslims and Americans in Afghanistan. Suddenly, they realized that their own lives were in danger from the Taliban militants.

I've been writing a new article about Pakistan every week or two for the last few months, and each week, Pakistan seems to be closer and closer to complete dissolution.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, a re-fighting of the massively genocidal war following the 1947 Partition that created India and Pakistan is coming with absolute certainty. Both India and Pakistan are becoming increasingly polarized between moderate and extremist groups, and this polarization extends to Afghanistan, where American forces are slowly but surely being drawn deeper into the conflict.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, as well as more frequent updates on this subject, see the Afghanistan, Pakistan and India thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (6-May-2009) Permanent Link
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Summary of articles on generational theory

Including a new article on Generational Dynamics forecasting methodology.

A number of people have asked me for more details how to perform Generational Dynamics forecasts. I've just added a new article that goes into a detailed theoretical description of the forecasting methodology:

• "Generational Dynamics forecasting methodology"

Most of the 1,500+ articles on this web site are analytical articles on current events -- either financial or geopolitical. And I've tried to insert bits and pieces of the theory into those articles as appropriate.

But for those interested in generational theory per se, there are a number of articles of this type.

If you have the time, a good place to start is the two Generational Dynamics books that I've written, both of which can be read for free online:

• Generational Dynamics: Forecasting America's Destiny, 2003
• Generational Dynamics for Historians, 2005

The following are the best online articles for learning about geopolitical theory in Generational Dynamics:

• "Basics of Generational Dynamics"
• "List of major Generational Dynamics predictions"
• "Six most dangerous regions in world"
• "Food - Green revolution v Malthus effect"
• "The bubble that broke the world"
• "William G. McLoughlin / Awakenings / Truman Doctrine"
• "Robert Pape - Dying to Win - Suicide terrorists"

The following are the best articles for learning about financial analysis forecasting theory in Generational Dynamics:

• "System Dynamics and the Failure of Macroeconomics Theory"
• "How to compute the 'real value' of the stock market."
• "11% Solution - Adam Barth - Barrons"
• "Markets fall as investors are increasingly unsettled by bad economic news"

Finally, the following article provides an introduction to The Singularity:

• "I, Robot is science fiction, but intelligent computers will soon be science fact."

Those wishing more theoretical information on The Singularity should read Chapter 7 - The Singularity in the book Generational Dynamics for Historians.

If you want to have a little fun, don't miss "Maybe we'll get it right this time," a science fiction story by Tom Mazanec, in which a time traveler tries to prevent the world war predicted by Generational Dynamics.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Generational Crises and Methods for Evaluation thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (5-May-2009) Permanent Link
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Rapid worldwide H1N1 swine flu spread is raising big concerns for the Fall.

People need to focus on they should do individually to prepare.

The mainstream media stories on the current pandemic flip-flop back and forth between saying that the worst is happening and saying that the press is being too alarmist. The purpose of this article is to describe exactly what's happening and what's likely to happen.

This is very frightening stuff. I strongly urge all web site readers to keep their heads and start making some hard decisions about what you should be doing to prepare. This is no time to bury your head in the sand.

Based on dozens of articles I've read, reflecting the views of experts in the field, here is my summary of where we are:

• A worldwide pandemic is imminent. Hundreds of millions or billions of people will be affected, although symptoms will be mild for 97% of the people. The age group 25-44 is most seriously affected. However, schools, businesses and public events in many large cities will probably be closed or canceled for days.
• The virus will fizzle in the Northern Hemisphere by July. However, with the winter flu season beginning in the Southern Hemisphere, it will probably continue there.
• There'll be a second wave in the Northern Hemisphere in the Fall. If it follows historical patterns, then it will be more serious than the current wave. If it follows the 1918 pattern -- and this is the great unknown today -- then tens of millions of people will be killed.

It's worth noting that the DNA sequences for the flu viruses found in the US and Europe are almost completely identical to those found in Mexico, and so we would expect the same results. Much of Mexico, especially Mexico City, is completely shut down, and it's likely that the same thing will happen in cities in America and Europe in the next month.

The timeline

Timeline: Three waves of 1918 Spanish flu pandemic (Source: CDC)

The graph on the right comes from a CDC analysis of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

As you can see from the graph, there were three waves: June 1918, Oct-Dec 1918, and Feb-Mar 1919. The worst was the Fall 1918 wave.

If we look back at the four previous major flu pandemics -- 1889, Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, Asian flu pandemic of 1957, and Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968 -- they all followed the same pattern. A spring wave of relatively mild illness was followed by a second wave, a few months later, of a much more virulent disease. However, in all but the 1918 case, the Fall wave was still fairly mild.

Thus, based on history, we can expect the current pandemic to fizzle around July (except in the Southern Hemisphere), but then return in a more virulent form in the fall. The fear is that we'll follow the 1918 pattern, and the Fall wave will be extremely virulent.

Target demographic: Ages 25-44

The swine flu serotype is different seasonal flu in that it targets a specific age group, around ages 25-44.

This can be seen in the following table from the CDC web site, which shows the number of confirmed cases and number of deaths in Mexico, April 1-27, 2009:

    TABLE 2. Number of patients and deaths from laboratory-confirmed
    infection with swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus (S-OIV), by
    age group --- Mexico, April 1--27, 2009*

    Age group (yrs)   No. infections       No. Deaths
    ---------------   --------------       ----------
    <5                5                    0
    5-19              4                    2
    20-39             9                    3
    40-59             6                    2
    >60               0                    0
    ---------------   --------------       ----------
    Total            24                    7

As you can see from the above table, even though there have been only a few deaths, the preponderance have been in the young adult age group.

Death by age group, 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Deaths per 100,000 people. (Source: CDC)

The graph on the right comes from a CDC analysis of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. The dotted line shows a typical seasonal flu pattern of deaths -- most of them occur among the very young or the very old.

But in the 1918 case, the number of deaths spiked in the 25-44 age group.

The reason is that these patients die of a "cytokine storm." The patient seems OK for 2-3 days, but then the patient develops pneumonia. This is most dangerous for people in the 25-44 year old range, because these people have strong immune systems. The disease creates a "cytokine storm": the person's lungs overreact by generating a "storm" of cytokines, chemicals that are produced by the immune system. The stronger the immune system, the greater the overreaction, and the more cytokines that are produced. The result is that the cytokines flood the lungs and make breathing impossible. The very young and the very old are less likely to die this way, because their immune systems aren't as good.

Dr. Henry Niman, who runs the Recombinomics web site, recently gave a lengthy interview on the current situation. The full video is here.

The flu outbreak in Mexico actually began in January or February. Niman estimates that there have been 200,000 cases in Mexico, but they've been extremely mild, so they weren't really noticed until they began to get more serious in March. Of the 200,000, he estimates that about 2000 cases (1%) led to pneumonia, and of those 2000 cases, about 10% have died.

According to Niman, there are three ways in which the current virus is following the same path as the 1918 virus:

• Virus: It's the same kind of H1N1 swine virus today as in 1918. In the 1889, 1958 and 1967 pandemics, there were different flu serotypes.
• Timing: It's only starting to spread late in the flu season, and it's very mild. The 1918 flu was very mild in the spring and summer, but became much more dangerous in the Fall.
• Target demographic: 25-44 year olds, in 1918, and today.

Thus, Niman is certain that a full-scale pandemic will occur in the next month or so, and that there's a good chance that the virus will follow the same path into the fall as the 1918 virus. This could lead to hundreds of millions of deaths worldwide.

I don't know what words to use to quantify this. The best I can come up with is this: There appears to be a non-trivial probability that an extremely virulent swine flu pandemic will occur in the fall. But whether "non-trivial probability" is 1%, 5%, 10% or 15%, I really don't know.

Anti-viral drugs and vaccines

There are two anti-viral drugs available today, Tamiflu and Relenza. According to Niman, "The problem is that seasonal flu H1N1 is resistant to Tamiflu, and so as the virus moves thru the human population, including the southern hemisphere, it will interact with the seasonal H1N1, which is Tamiflu resistant, and there's a good chance that the resistance will transfer over to the swine flu. So in the fall, the virus that emerges will probably be Tamiflu and Relenza resistant."

Another issue has to do with vaccines.

According to the CDC, "All of the genes of all of the viruses that we’ve examined to date are 99% to 100% identical." This means it will be "somewhat easier to produce an influenza vaccine, because the viruses that are spreading are so similar to each other."

I personally have some difficulty seeing how a vaccine could make much difference to the world as a whole.

Let's assume the best scenario: A vaccine is developed by September, and it's still effective against whatever mutated virus emerges in the Fall.

Then we're still talking about a world with 6.5 billion people, and I doubt that more than 1-2% of them could be vaccinated before the flu season begins. So we're still talking about the potential of huge worldwide mortality, assuming that the virus is extremely virulent.

The 1976 Swine Flu fiasco

A number of articles are comparing today's situation to the 1976 swine flu fiasco.

I've actually written about that before. 1976 was 58 years after the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and the details of the 1976 fiasco provide remarkable support to the "58-year hypothesis." For more information see, "The Iraq war may be related to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

For our purposes here, the point is that the 1976 episode even really was a fiasco, a totally irrational panic. As part of the panic, the government manufactured millions of doses of swine flu vaccine, most of which were unused. In attempt to get people to agree to be vaccinated, the government produced promotional ads. Here's a video of some of the promotional ads.

Eating pork

A number of countries, including Russia, China, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Saint Lucia, and Ecuador, have imposed partial or complete bans on imported pork from Mexico and the US.

This is entirely futile, since it's impossible to catch swine flu from swine. It's true that one form of the virus infected pigs, but the mutated virus affecting humans is completely different, and cannot be transmitted by pigs.

This is different from the bird flu virus. The H5N1 bird flu virus can infect both birds and humans. In fact, it was just last week that a child in Egypt died of bird flu, and may have contracted it from chickens.

However, no such thing is possible from H1N1 swine flu. Pigs cannot get sick from the human form of the virus, and humans cannot get sick from the pig form. They're completely different viruses. So banning pork imports is completely irrational.

Update: Apparently this is no longer true. A news story reports that "Canada reported the world’s first case of the swine flu jumping to pigs from a human, probably after a farm worker in the province of Alberta became ill during a trip to Mexico." (Paragraph added 2-May)

What you should do

You should plan on getting used to hearing the phrase "social distancing." It refers to a policy of reducing contact between people. This means closing schools, restaurants and other businesses, and canceling public events.

What will you do when that happens? What will you do if the stores in your neighborhood or town are closed? What will you do if the kids have to stay home from school? What will you do if you and your family are quarantined in your home?

These are things you can prepare for today -- while you're well, while stores and schools are still open. You can stock up on canned food. You can buy a couple of board games to pass the time. You can be prepared with medicines. Something as simple as tissues can make a difference.

You don't have to spend a lot of money, so that if this whole flu scare fizzles, then you haven't lost anything. But this is the time to keep your head and make some specific plans for how you and your family will survive if the worst happens.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Swine Flu Pandemic thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (2-May-2009) Permanent Link
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