It will depend on the red side of the divide; whether they will continue to support the radical right and the free market ideology. If they do, then they will have to be defeated before the divide becomes irrelevant. I suspect that time will come when the 4T turns to the 1T, long about 2029.Originally Posted by pbrower2a
I don’t disagree with you, but I’d like to point out that Pim Fortuyn would have won the Dutch election in 2002 had he not been assassinated.
Some states are red,
some states are blue,
the mutual feather ruffling
shits on you.
MBTI step II type : Expressive INTP
There's an annual contest at Bond University, Australia, calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term:
The winning student wrote:
"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and promoted by mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end."
Well commodity prices were a big part of the K-wave theory, but they weren't the only component. These guys zeroed in on that component and came up with a slightly different timeframe for their waves.
http://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2012/wp110_2012.pdf
I don't think the gold standard does anything particularly special to the relative swings in commodity prices. Even when currency is backed by gold, a large part of the "paper money" backing bubbles wasn't more than promises. It does give gold some emotional baggage, helping gold outperform other metals and minerals, which outperformed food. It's a pretty emotional metal, much like oil is an emotional product (less so than it used to be, shiny seems to be more endearing)This also makes the early 2000's confusing (and why much of what I wrote here turned out to be bullshit). I was way under-bullish on gold. Frankly, I did not expect gold to quintuple during a deflationary era. Then again I did not expect a fucking panic and quantitative easing. Back in the 1990's I expected QE in the 2010's but that was based on a 2002 K-winter start. When it didn't happen I figured it would be later. But what was it about commodity prices and the divergence from interest rates?
Once off the gold standard, nominal prices can vary with business cycles. They shouldn't necessarily show 50-year K-cycles anymore. And I believe they have not. Take gas prices. In the early 1980's they had quadrupled from where they were a decade earlier. The same thing happened in 2008. This isn't 50 years, its closer to half that. The first was was an actual K-peak, associated with high interest rates. The second was during an deflationary era associated with low interest rates.
Since 2008 the Fed has turned on a firehose of money with very little inflation. Commodity prices have gone up and down, with no correlation with the monetary environment. It is clear that commodities follow their own cycles today, uncoupled from the global monetary environment. If I were as Marxist like Kinser I would probably try to build a core versus periphery model ala Immanuel Wallerstein. But I'm not
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/jfrankel/CP.htm
Overshoot is an important aspect of these emotional trades - when they're down, they're really down, and when they go up, it's sky high -
And interest rates also influence commodity prices a lot more than most contemporary economists assume.
At near-zero interest, assuming finite resources, any stockpile will have more value tomorrow than today. Easy monetary policy and lax regulation of commercial banks makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy! Expectations of a rate hike have been baked in, and that alone was enough to put a huge dent in the commodity market. Now traders are upset that the Fed hasn't actually raised those rates yet!
Those words, "temperate and moderate", are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good, is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.
'82 - Once & always independent
I don't think you should downplay the impact of the (partial) demonetization of gold on its price to the extent that you just did. I also think the recent plunge in commodity prices has a lot more to do with the Saudis attempt to run the shale industry out of business and the dramatic slowdown in China (convincingly demonstrated by its drop in imports and exports, which can be factchecked, versus its GDP, which cannot).
Yes, and when that awareness took place in the early 90's and I was like, "Oh, so we're going to go into the topic of generations again, cool!", even though I'm not sure it had been raised on a popular level previously in the 70's/80's time frame. I just took it for granted and liked to remember it had, probably because that's an experience Xers felt deeply: the enormous disconnect between us and the next elder generation, being related to the experience of living next to that deep wide gulf that divided us from all previous history, called the 60's.
INTP 1970 Core X
A fairly easy solution for most people who chafe at life in "Red" communities because such communities are "Red" is to move to some "Blue" community. If you live in rural Oklahoma, then what do you need to do? Go to Kansas City, Denver, or Dallas? Such is a manageable journey. Freedom of movement is a basic civil liberty, and so long as America does not have internal checkpoints to control travel, all that stops one from moving might be a lack of funds or (possibly) misguided loyalties or opportunism.
It's easy to see what is wrong with "Red" America. Opportunities are limited heavily to cheap-labor operations. Who with imagination or education really wants to do farm labor, work in a rural sweatshop, or work in retail or food service? In rural America one can survive on low pay in a job with low pay and little opportunity for use of the mind. Of course, not having to use one's mind on the job (or elsewhere) attracts and concentrates authoritarian types, which fosters an authoritarian culture. "Red" America thus becomes increasingly authoritarian and hostile to independent thought. Authoritarian religion, usually of the Protestant fundamentalist variety flourish with little challenge. One needs little education to thrive there, and aside from the occasional schoolteacher, physician, dentist, attorney, or accountant one can get away with a low level of education.
So suppose that you are a barber or a bartender whose job description is much the same whether one lives in Cleveland, Texas or Cleveland, Ohio? What sort of difference would you expect in the sorts of conversations one would have? Telling someone who believes that Sharia law is a genuine menace, that homosexuality is a great crime (as if arson), or that young-earth creationism is the Revealed Truth that he is need of the intellectual equivalent of an enema is not good for business.
OK, so what does "Red America" have to offer? Maybe a low cost of living. The highest-cost cities in America are all very "Blue". So are most of their suburbs. Westchester, Marin, Fairfax, and Prince Georges Counties have high-incomes and are very Blue. The only low-cost Blue cities in which to live (Detroit, St. Louis) are wrecks. The old assumption that people become more politically conservative as their income increases has become obsolescent. Generally lacking in high-quality colleges or universities, such places are unlikely to offer any intellectual challenge to superstition, bigotry, and sentimentality. One can be an ignoramus in blissful ignorance. One can also fly a (Confederate) Flag proudly. One can lbe more involved with something so material as cars. As Jeff Foxworthy puts it,
"If you have eight cars and only one of them runs, you might be a redneck".
You can get away with the joke anywhere, but parking even one non-working motor vehicle in your front yard is impossible where there are no front yards and frowned upon in San Mateo County, California. It costs more to park a car or to rent a garage space at the apartment in New York City than the payments. (A quick lesson of demographic geography: I was traveling the Tappan Zee Bridge on a Sunday afternoon, and I noticed all the expensive cars apparently returning from Upstate New York -- Catskills? Low-priced cars such as Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge, Plymouth, Toyota, Nissan, and Honda were conspicuous by their absence -- especially turning off toward the Center of the Universe).
The poor have cars in dreadful southeastern Kentucky, but the middle class seems not to have cars in New York City. If the middle class does not have cars, then it must rely upon public transport and must support high taxes just to offer mass transit. Teachers must be paid well enough to keep them from leaving the profession (or as in a Blue city) leaving for a less-costly place to live; cops have to be paid well enough to ensure that they rely upon their formal paychecks instead of being paid off the books by the Mafia. One must get accustomed to certain norms in a big city, like picking up the droppings of the dog that you walk -- which would be no problem if you are walking the pooch along a road abutting a cornfield.
But what does one get if one is in Blue America? More variety of things to do within easy reach. More ethnic diversity to make life interesting -- because an Italian enclave and a Chinese enclave might be within walking distance of each other. The few opportunities for doing something creative and getting recognition for such. Better educational opportunities. Well-endowed libraries. Art galleries. A wider variety of music. If attending an opera is your idea of a great way to spend an evening, then you belong in Blue America. If you think that attending an opera is about as scary as facing a cougar, then you probably are part of Red America.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Well When I run the 2008 4T in my model the outcome fits the British past crises fairly well. 1929 was not as big a deal in Britain as the US, the secular bull market peak was in 1937 there, not 1929 as it was here. Also the crisis lasted for some time after the end of WW II. So the 1937-1954 WW II 4T dates make sense for them. The 1781-1800 4T also make sense for them. The humiliation at Yorktown is a reasonable start. Trafalgar would be a reasonable end. The Glorious core dates of 1687-1700 also make sense. The 1675 start S&H use refers to exclusively American events. I believe the original of the earlier American turnings was this turning. The only troubling issue is the 1867-1888 19th century 4T which seems late.
Anyways based on the model I would say the British 4T began later than the US one, like the earlier 4T's. The 2008 date looks good.
You are right about this. I think that the current oil price drop got started by the Saudis but it would not surprise me if Putin has decided to help the process along, with the help of Iran and Iraq. According to the IMF at Saudi Arabia's current burn rate they will be bankrupt in five years. Russia has more going for it than oil, unlike Saudi Arabia, so increasing production with Iran an Iraq would allow them to crush the House of Saud in the long term. Russia is far more stable politically than Saudi Arabia ever was and not being able to spread the oil wealth around could cause a major uprising with severe consequences for the current King.
If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.
- Ludwig von Mises
Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
- Lazarus Long
The paper is about real commodity price swings--a completely different kettle of fish than nominal commodity price cycles. Essentially they have stripped monetary factors out, revealing the underlying cycles in the real economy. Monetary issues like the gold standard, money supply or velocity have been "detrended out" of these cycles.
The cycles they find do not all agree with each other. Some show Rostow's cycles. Many show major show major bottoms in the 1930's and 1990's, which is probably why the orthodox K-cycle folks at the longwaves site (those that saw the peak in 1973 rather than ca. 1980 like we in the extended-plateau school favored) thought we were in K-winter in the 1990's. They would look at the strong commodity super cycle upsurge since 1999 as evidence that a new upwave had begun (K-spring). Politically they saw the 2000 election as like 1948, in fact, one of them predicted at the start of 2000 a photo finish for the election with a Gore victory by a hair.
It is an interesting paper, I've bookmarked it in case I get some other ideas. What is above are just my first impressions.
Last edited by Mikebert; 11-15-2015 at 08:02 AM.
Well the first is basically a consequence of the second. And the second is the pretty much the entire story of the current behavior of the cycles in that paper John linked to. The key issue is why is China not continuing its growth. I believe its pretty much the same reason growth in the US is poor.
The basic issue is one an assumption. Does economics trump politics, or vice versa?
Saudi Arabia's influence is way over-rated, IMO, and fracking/shale has always been doomed to be a bad investment. It puts a premium price on old tech energy sources - don't even get me started on the additional environmental costs!
What happened with oil prices also happened in steel, aluminum, copper, corn, rice, wheat, and it can't all be blamed on high energy prices because some commodities outperformed energy baskets in general. Gold and oil are particularly emotional and tend to overshoot: They make headlines, but thinking that gold or oil moves the market is like thinking the cart pushes the horse.
People, those emotional critters that try to be rational, are the ones that drive the market. And all the market signals have been pointing to panic for a while.
Yes!
Well, it's a cycle. One generation's political choices inform successive generation's economic reality. This economic/material reality then informs the next generation's political choices.
But politics is definitely lagging behind economic indicators, and the amount seems proportionate to how responsive a country's government is to such market-based, crowd-sourced signals. History has shown that powerful and unquestioned authoritarian governments can ignore the economic reality of the masses for a long time - right up until they're facing a guillotine.
The 4T is basically an economic panic of some sort:
- "British Mercantilism is killing our farm profits!" [advancement]
- "Plantation profits and cruelty are stifling industry and oppressing our people!" [atonement]
- "Industry has outsupplied demand!" [advancement]
- "Industry has stripped the world of resources and left an environmental mess - we're buried in debts and promises we cannot possibly repay!" [atonement]
The panic signal has been amplifying pretty steadily since the Asian Tiger Crash, and it's picked up energy with the Tech crash, 9-11, and peaked (so far) with the 2008 panic. What made 2008 different was that up until then, the government had been actively working to say there was no reason to panic. "Just go shopping! Buy a house!" Then Bush and Paulson showed up to say, "Ok, now it's time to freak out. Give us a whole bunch of money or the entire economy dies..."
Those words, "temperate and moderate", are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good, is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.
'82 - Once & always independent
A nonsequiter and a bunch of handwaving. Classic.
Saudi Arabia's influence on oil prices stemmed from the size if its spare capacity, which it could turn on and off as it saw fit to manage prices (within reason). As for shale oil/fracking, the fact that it is not a new technology (the first well was fracked in the 40s, and geologists had been aware of those basins since at least the 70s), nor one with a terribly long future (depletion rates on those wells is horrendous) is not immediately relevant to why prices have collapsed. There is a specific oversupply in oil, owing to the factors alluded to before, and a more general one owing to the ramifications of China's economic growth, is China's enormous demand raising prices, boosting incomes in resource dependent economies, which raises their consumption, which puts pressure on commodity prices while also boosting demand for Chinese industrial goods, boosting its demand for commodities, etc. China running into the inevitable barrier to further investment led growth experienced by every other Asian country that followed that model has put paid to that cycle, leading to the collapse in commodities/recession in EM + Canada and Australia. Are there psychological factors involved, too? Sure. But not to the extent you seem to claim. The difference in commodity futures and other investment vehicles is that at a certain point, the holder of the paper actually has to take delivery of a physical commodity.
When you think about, the Crisis is showing the same pattern as it did in the last Crisis(1930-45). in the first few years of the Great Depression, the elites refused to acknowledge anything was wrong or take meaningful action.
H-m-m-m. The wrangling seems to be an eerie ghost of the same wrangling that occurred in the 1850s. Only the topics have changed, not the invective. So why is that not germane?
I guess you can argue that the actual arguments themselves are outside the paradigm, but the fact that we are having them and the level of disagreement is not trivial or beside the point.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
There was plenty of invective and political stasis in the 1930s, too, progressive hagiographies of the period to the contrary. The fact that these discussions are occurring in this manner is interesting, the discussions themselves are more tribal than anything else. And I am not the only person who has roundly said that I am deeply tired of reading them. If you want to continue indulging yourself by wallowing in the point-counterpoint of self-congratulatory rhetoric / claims of immanent apocalypse as the political calendar dictates, by all means, go ahead.
I for one am not interested. But please, don't let me stop you.
That political infighting was a factor that slowed the US entry into WW2. Retrospectively it was very nearly a disaster. By being in denial about our inevitable entry into the war we failed to prepare for it.
To which one might add that the National Front surged in the 2002 elections, reaching the second round of the Presidential election. The 2004-2005 timeframe also saw the Banlieu riots in Paris, the subway bombing in London, the rejection of the EU Constitution Treaty in referendum by France and the Netherlands, and the Madrid train bombing. I thought about those after I posted. Am still not convinced that genuinely changed the mood in Europe more than the Financial Crisis did, but since I think the transition is more analogue than digital I will allow that the 2000s decade was a transition from the 3T to the 4T, and that arguing over which year in particular marked the change might be a little academic (in the popular meaning of that word, "trivial").
Are you addressing me? I don't see where we differ. Also when do you see Britain's 19th century 4T?
Last edited by Mikebert; 11-16-2015 at 09:17 PM.
No, John. And somewhere in between the Crimean War and the aftershocks of the Franco-Prussian War. The Great Mutiny was definitely part of it.
Yeah that's the consensus of three Historians who posted here in the late 1990's. Dave Krein is the only one left.
I still hold to 1857 and the Sepoy Mutiny as the Crisis beginning with an adaptive generation starting to be born ca. 1853-4.
Pax,
Dave Krein '42
"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your Tears wash out a word of it." - Omar Khayyam.
It helps to compare it to everywhere else that we know is on the same basic timeframe. As Chas has pointed out, the revolutions in 1848 are too important to be anything other than a 2T or a 4T, and the timing doesn't work for a 2T at all (well, except Russia/ME/Latin America?, but that's a whole different kettle of fish). The conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War is so obviously the approximate start date for a whole host of new issues (you can see it very clearly in every nongenerational history of period, it's as clear a marker as the end of WWII) that it isn't really worth arguing for. In between that time you had the Prussian Wars leading to the German Empire and the Dual Monarchy, the US Civil War, the Great Mutiny, the Crimean War, the Meiji Restoration, the Taiping Rebellion, the Second Opium War, the Risorgimento, the Unification of most of British North America into the Dominion of Canada, etc. The only country that truly floated in a bubble of peace and prosperity was Britain, and much of that was due to the genius of Lord Palmerston (with aid from the Crown), who steered the Empire past several dangerous shores and presided over numerous domestic reforms that improved the standard of living for Britain's people dramatically, warding off the revolutionary pressures that afflicted so many of Britain's contemporaries.
Revolutionary pressures existed in Britain, but at a much more contained level, and I'd attribute both Prince Albert and Prince Bertie (future Edward VII) as doing their best to relieve pressures in their own unique ways in addition to Palmerston, while if Victoria had had her way completely, she likely would have caused a revolt from her attitudes and actions. Though the ending of the 4T is plain enough, when Republican sentiment faded away, which it did after this event as dramatized by 1975 BBC TV.
It was after Bertie's brush with death that lingering Republican sentiment which had fanned up for one last time departed as Victoria entered her second popularity--and Bertie culminated a political alliance from all parties. A sigh of relief is what follows from which you get a 1T mood. And for those interested, Sullivan's Festival Te Deum, which sounds like something a country emerging out of a 4T into a 1T would produce.
~Chas'88
Last edited by Chas'88; 11-17-2015 at 06:42 PM.
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
That's who I meant. Prince Albert, for one, played a role in helping resolve the Trent Affair (which might have brought Britain into the US Civil War):Revolutionary pressures existed in Britain, but at a much more contained level, and I'd attribute both Prince Albert and Prince Bertie (future Edward VII) as doing their best to relieve pressures in their own unique ways in addition to Palmerston, while if Victoria had had her way completely, she likely would have caused a revolt from her attitudes and actions. Though the ending of the 4T is plain enough, when Republican sentiment faded away, which it did after this event as dramatized by 1975 BBC TV.
After several days of discussion, on November 30 Russell sent to Queen Victoria the drafts of the dispatches intended for Lord Lyons to deliver to Seward. The Queen in turn asked her husband and consort, Prince Albert, to review the matter. Although ill with typhoid that would shortly take his life, Albert read through the dispatches, decided the ultimatum was too belligerent, and composed a softened version. In his November 30 response to Palmerston, Albert wrote:
The Queen … should have liked to have seen the expression of a hope [in the message to Seward] that the American captain did not act under instructions, or, if he did that he misapprehended them [and] that the United States government must be fully aware that the British Government could not allow its flag to be insulted, and the security of her mail communications to be placed in jeopardy, and [that] Her Majesty's Government are unwilling to believe that the United States Government intended wantonly to put an insult upon this country and to add to their many distressing complications by forcing a question of dispute upon us, and that we are therefore glad to believe … that they would spontaneously offer such redress as alone could satisfy this country, viz: the restoration of the unfortunate passengers and a suitable apology.[76]
