Originally Posted by pbrower2a

We may be entering a new era in which those who have everything handed on a silver platter are expected to demonstrate that they deserve it. The old fortunes in retailing, banking, and manufacturing ordinarily required the aid of family members in the fast-growth time in which genuine effort was necessary for keeping things from falling apart. It's not quite so these days when the fortunes arise from speculative investment, government contracts, and cracking the whip on scared employees. Not so long ago it was the grandchildren of the founders who frittered away the assets that others had painstakingly accumulated. Now it's the kids.

A 4T has one wholesome effect in pushing conspicuous consumption off the stage. High-priced marques of automobiles such as Duesenberg and Pierce-Arrow vanished not because people could no longer afford them; they disappeared because people dared be seen with them. Conspicuous consumption draws much the same attention during a 4T from taxing authorities as does flashing cash in the presence of potential muggers: the first says "Tax me!" and the second says "Mug me!"

If you've been watching the final season of "The Sopranos" on HBO you'll have noticed that conspicuous consumption and the silver platter have been a major theme for the mafia folks, too. (See Tony Jr.'s $30,00.00 SUV going up in a fire-ball explosion because he parked on a pile of dry leaves, and Carmella's constant remodeling/catalogue shopping during a bloody gang war.) Those people know how to consume!

I wonder when we're all going to take to the mattresses?

Originally Posted by Linus

So I'm watching the live feed of MSNBC at work.

Do you remember how a few years ago people were complaining there weren't enough abduction-sploitation segments featuring attractive young black women?

It seems the cable news networks (or at least MSNBC) have taken this criticism to heart and are now airing abduction-sploitation segments featuring attractive young black women.

I look forward to the multi-day marathon coverage of some Mexican child that has fallen into a well.

I would have recorded this segment and stuck it somewhere I could link to but the product we're supposed to be selling to do this sort of thing from live feed doesn't seem to work.

"You'll know we have equality when a mediocre black person can get as far as a mediocre white person." One of us Silents, again roughly paraphrased.

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

On Wal-Mart, it is fashionable to make them the primary whipping boy for what is happening on Main Street USA. But I have often pointed out that they are not alone in this process.

No, they just pioneered it.

What's interesting is that when outfits such as Woolworth's were in their heyday, there were still plenty of independent retailers who were not as grossly impacted by that chain as many are by Wal-Mart. Then again, I don't think the former was nearly as much an all-purpose center as the latter has become.

Woolworth's was not expressly designed to destroy its competition. Wal-Mart's current incarnation is.

Chains such as Walgreen's, Blockbuster, Borders, and even Jiffy-Lube are example of much the same mentality, that being to saturate the marketplace thoroughly enough so that people will have few if any choices other than them for books, pharmaceuticals, etc.

You know, there is a word for such a mentality. It's called "monopolism". They're being more careful than the XIXth century type, but that's what these types of businesses are up to: effective market control, which (they have discovered) doesn't actually require 100% market share. Microsoft is another of the type, having taken the place of IBM, which also did the same thing once upon a time.

Such things can be regulated by the government, but it is the hallmark of a 3T that such regulation doesn't happen. Teddy Roosevelt "trustbusted" in the 2T but regulation all but disappeared in the First World War and the Roaring Twenties... to return with a vengeance in the 4T. The "Deregulation" of various industries in the 80's will probably be re-reversed in the coming years.

Originally Posted by antichrist

Like I said, just because the intelligentsia has one opinion of it doesn't mean that its regular customers agree. Especially since they are low-taste, debased, impulsive, and trying to assuage their damaged psyches.

Any wonder why the Reds don't like or trust the intelligentsia?

First, "Red" America has been shrinking. The 2006 Congressional elections that turned the House firmly Blue and the Senate effectively Blue better indicate which Party is perceived as better serving the interests of most Americans. America may be no less conservative than it was in 2000; the Democratic hold on the Senate depends upon the replacement of at least corrupt or erratic Bush supporters with conservative Democrats.

I can tolerate conservatism in the sense of smaller government that has fewer goodies to dole out to campaign contributors.

The 'hold my nose' reference is to its ability to use market power to crush competition and suppliers while promoting the export of jobs. There's a dark side to the low prices. Besides, Wally World demonstrate that consumerism has become the opiate of the masses.

I fail to see myself as an Enemy of the People because I love classical music or recognize the best seller list as suspect, because my spelling errors and grammatical errors are typos, or because I would rather watch a golf tournament than a stock car race. You don't ask a surgeon what he thinks of NASCAR or mass-market beer should you need to go under the knife.

Ask yourself this: what have the executives who make megabuck salaries ever done for the fellow who works at the plant, at least lately? Held down wages despite rising productivity? Smashed any illusion of economic security? Supported soaring energy prices? Schmoozed with right-wing politicians to raid the treasury for sweetheart contracts?

Without doubt, Wal-Mart is far more honorable than Halliburton or the Oil Cartel. I live in a dreary hick town, and for much of what Wal-Mart has to offer, my alternatives are either mail order, go fifty miles to and fro, or do without.

Originally Posted by catfishncod

No, they just pioneered it.

You know, there is a word for such a mentality. It's called "monopolism". They're being more careful than the XIXth century type, but that's what these types of businesses are up to: effective market control, which (they have discovered) doesn't actually require 100% market share. Microsoft is another of the type, having taken the place of IBM, which also did the same thing once upon a time.

Such things can be regulated by the government, but it is the hallmark of a 3T that such regulation doesn't happen. Teddy Roosevelt "trustbusted" in the 2T but regulation all but disappeared in the First World War and the Roaring Twenties... to return with a vengeance in the 4T. The "Deregulation" of various industries in the 80's will probably be re-reversed in the coming years.

The monopoly control of retailing not only concentrates wealth in fewer hands; it also destroys potential competition. It creates a sort of socialism without social justice: the absence of entrepreneurial alternatives to the Big Chains. Maybe it partly reflects the degradation of working-class wages, but I think of all the clothing, shoe, record, and book stores that even towns used to have. Those are gone, having been crushed by Wal-Mart.

I remember -- it wasn't so long ago -- delightful one-place book-and-music stores. The owner was the manager, and the merchandise wasn't all the same between two different such stores. Such places were genuine destinations worthy of the inconvenience of an hour-and-a-half drive. Such stores better fit the local characteristics; Ann Arbor is very different from Kalamazoo or Lansing, let alone Saginaw, even if they are much the same size. Those stores are disappearing in favor of Borders and Barnes and Noble.

The writer of this article claims that after an economic crisis occurs, trust will reemerge as a virtue for business leaders, and Millenial workers will become prone to work for more "conventional" and "stable" coorporations. It appears as if the Business World will soon undergo a stunning organizational transformation - in what could be a throwback to the "civic-minded" and "enlightened" cooperations of the 1950s.

http://www.prudentbear.com/articles/show/2036

Trust is an essential to commerce. I have written previously how oligarchic markets in some respect work better than fully competitive ones, because the level of trust between the participants is higher, and so there is less need for extensive legal documentation and less likelihood of catastrophic error through malfeasance or misunderstanding. Throughout human life, transactions become more difficult and perilous if trust is not present. Even in personal interactions a propensity to fabrication can doom the most promising relationship.

. . . .


This pattern persisted until well after World War II. David Kynaston’s “City of London” has harsh words for the oligarchic City of the 1950s and 1960s, in which Morgan Grenfell Chairman Vivian, Lord Bicester could in 1954 ask the Bank of England to prevent the takeover of British companies by the untrustworthy, but the system worked very well, producing by 1980 most of the innovations of modern finance, at a cost in terms of GDP a small fraction of the bloated financial services sector of today.

After 1980 or so, things changed. A number of factors were responsible for this. Generationally, the cohort which had indulged in sexual and psychedelic experimentation in the 1960s, and had rejected the morality and lifestyle of its parents, began to control a major portion of the financial system. In London, the merchant banks were wiped out by the abolition of the Accepting Houses Committee in 1981 and by the Financial Services Act of 1986. Globalization brought companies much more closely into competition with entities from other cultures with different behavior standards (Japanese behavior standards were at least as high as Western, but the “signals” were different.) The rewards for success for CEOs soared, as did the penalties for failure (no mainstream CEO before Enron’s Jeff Skilling was given a 24 year jail sentence for going bankrupt.)

. . .

Generationally, we may have some hope of improvement. The 1960s are not going to happen again, thank God, and the generation that was nurtured by them is finally passing from the boardroom. Subsequent generations have shown themselves in youth far less prone to rebel against the political, social and ethical norms of society, as evidenced by declining crime, drug use and illegitimacy. It is likely that as the current generation rises to power in the business world it will come to find itself less attracted by the quick wealth promised by hedge funds and the like, and more attracted by the chance of building something worthwhile in the long term.

This won’t happen while cheap money remains, however. If starting salaries working for a hedge fund are three or four times starting salaries working for a conventional corporation, any reasonably able and ambitious graduate will gravitate towards the hedge fund. More than a third of the Harvard Business School Class of 2007 have accepted jobs at hedge funds and private equity funds. That does not reflect the students’ ethical choices, it is simply a reflection of the economics they face – it is, incidentally an almost perfect “sell” signal for those institutions.

Only once cheap money has gone, and the inevitable shake-out in the short term return businesses of Wall Street has occurred, will Harvard Business School and other well qualified students make their choices based on their own underlying values and not on a huge immediate differential in earnings. At that point, the outcomes are likely to be very different. Contrary to the leftist dream, HBS students will not rush off to join charities, but major corporations that show signs of both stability and a high level of innovation will prove attractive destinations.

However, more than the end of cheap money will be needed for trust to return. For one thing, the end of cheap money is likely to lead initially to a surge in bankruptcies, which will inevitably be accompanied by innumerable toe-curling sagas of corporate malfeasance. For several years, very few people will trust the corporate sector at all, good, bad or indifferent. That, like the disruption caused by bankruptcy to the lives of innocent employees, is the inevitable denouement of an era of artificially cheap money and bubble-hood.

Corporations will regain their good name, and their ability to be trusted, by acting in a trustworthy manner. Stability will eventually return to the corporate structure, so that the median corporation exists for half a century and not half a decade. Top management must stop using accounting shenanigans to deceive shareholders about the excessive remuneration they are extracting – needless to say this will also require them to stop extracting excessive remuneration. Leverage must be cut back sharply – those corporations which do not do this will in any case not survive in an era of tight money. Business plans must be rationalized, and not become mere tools of empire building and corporate dealmaking. Consultancy usage must be cut back, and eliminated altogether from such areas as top executive compensation in which it is ethically inappropriate.

In a decade or so, the corporations emerging from the downturn will finally be trustworthy, and will in their business dealings put two-way trust relationships at the top of their objectives, where they belong. They will not look like the corporations of 1965; for one thing they will be far more multi-national, bound together by the marvels of modern communication, and they will manufacture primarily in locations where labor costs are much lower than the United States, and yet quality is as good. However between their multinational workforces internally, and between the multinational workforces of corporations that do business together, trust will be established at an extremely high level.

The technology would be incomprehensible to J.P. Morgan, and the diversity of race, national origin and indeed sex somewhat repugnant. However if Morgan returned to 2027 he would see, as in 2007 he would not, that the central principles of trust in which he believed were alive and well.

This author certainly doesn't seem too bright about what the future

http://www.prudentbear.com/articles/show/2037

Last week, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note recorded its biggest one-day jump in years and breached the five percent level for the first time since July. Other fixed-income markets quickly followed suit, hurt not only by a nominal rise in rates but by a jump in risk spreads. One trader described the sell-off in the mortgage-backed securities market as “a good old-fashioned mortgage puke.”

The ostensible reason behind the sudden jitters, following a period when yields were already drifting higher, was the decision by European and New Zealand central banks to boost short-term interest rates. What’s more, a smattering of positive economic data finally convinced some investors that the Federal Reserve meant business when it said rising inflation was its main concern.

The turmoil was not confined to fixed-income markets, however. Most U.S. and European stock markets were also rattled, after testing new highs only days earlier, and emerging equity and currency markets also got slammed by a bout of heavy selling. Precious metals prices slipped amid liquidation pressures and short-covering in the dollar, while options premiums rose, as the VIX index, or “fear gauge,” broke out from a multi-week base.

There was trouble in other quarters, too. The Wall Street Journal reported that some recent leveraged buyouts were starting to trigger alarm bells, noting that it was “striking how quickly a few of the deals have run into problems.” A Federal Reserve loan officer survey indicated that lenders were not only tightening standards on subprime loans, but were beginning to closely scrutinize some prime borrowers. Another recent poll noted that corporate chief financial officers had turned pessimistic on the U.S. economy.

Elsewhere, a report revealed that analysts, in a rare move, had downgraded earnings forecasts for a number of investment banks, whose financial vitality is often seen as a leading indicator for markets as a whole. There was also growing speculation that Goldman Sachs and other bulge-bracket firms were considering a hiring freeze, which is not the sort of step that is taken lightly by revenue-hungry operators.

On the political front, the immigration reform bill, apparently crafted with bipartisan support and announced to great fanfare only weeks ago, was suddenly dead in water, amid infighting among and between party members on all sides of the aisle. Overseas, the G8 meeting of leading nations not only failed to reach agreement on its loftier goals, but participants seemed to come out of it with relationships that were worse for wear.

Tensions also flared up in hotspots around the world, and oil prices approached a record $70 a barrel. In Turkey, there were reports of troop incursions into Iraq and word that the Turks had declared martial law in the border area between the two countries. North Korea confirmed that it had recently tested short-range missiles, while Russia threatened to aim its missiles at Europe. In Pakistan, there were revolutionary stirrings as protests against the president swelled.

All of a sudden, it seems there is a great deal of anxiety around, not only in matters of money, but in a more general sense as well. Where once there was seemingly endless complacency, there is now growing pessimism and serious doubts about what the future may bring. In the financial markets and elsewhere, ties woven in an era of globalization and good times are being stretched thin, and some threads are beginning to unravel.

Perhaps it is nothing more than coincidence. Many analysts, for example, might view recent financial market turmoil as a knee-jerk response to global monetary policy changes. By the same token, political observers might interpret the near-term scotching of immigration reform as an unfortunate byproduct of pre-election posturing. Those who follow international affairs might blame developments in Turkey and Pakistan on fallout from the war in Iraq.

Even so, it is hard to believe that this abrupt and widespread change in mood, coursing as it has through the world of money, politics, social relations, and international affairs, is mere happenstance. Or that a wide range of catalysts with nary a common thread between them all seem to be causing events to turn in the same destabilizing direction.

Instead, it seems likely that we are on the periphery of a dramatic and potentially far-reaching transition to a new, more hostile environment — one that most people are both unfamiliar with and ill-prepared for. Odds are that it will be a dangerous, costly, divisive, and debilitating period, when all sorts of relationships and assumptions will be severely tested.

Like it or not, it looks like it’s time to say goodbye. Goodbye to the good old days.

Originally Posted by antichrist

Like I said, just because the intelligentsia has one opinion of it doesn't mean that its regular customers agree. Especially since they are low-taste, debased, impulsive, and trying to assuage their damaged psyches.

Any wonder why the Reds don't like or trust the intelligentsia?

Dude, you started way on the Left and I far on the Right, and we have mentioned how we have met in the middle. I sometimes wonder if we now run the risk of passing each other by!

Originally Posted by Millennial_90'

This author certainly doesn't seem too bright about what the future

http://www.prudentbear.com/articles/show/2037

All of a sudden, it seems there is a great deal of anxiety around, not only in matters of money, but in a more general sense as well. Where once there was seemingly endless complacency, there is now growing pessimism and serious doubts about what the future may bring. In the financial markets and elsewhere, ties woven in an era of globalization and good times are being stretched thin, and some threads are beginning to unravel

We definitely be 4T.

Originally Posted by Odin

We definitely be 4T.

Dare I say, "good"?

Originally Posted by 1990

Dare I say, "good"?

or how about "finally" ?

Originally Posted by Millennial_90'

or how about "finally" ?

I can't yet point to a 4T catalyst - 9/11, Katrina, or neither - but I do know that the mood seems to get more jumpy, more impatient, darker every month. I believe S&H would consider that a key sign of a pre-Regeneracy 4T.

Originally Posted by 1990

Dare I say, "good"?

I bet you won't be thinking that if, three years from now, America is engaged in a vicious civil war or if America is in a fully totalitarian state. Keep in mind that such eras contain much more suffering than 3T eras. But of course, they contain a lot of very good moments too.

Originally Posted by 1990

I can't yet point to a 4T catalyst - 9/11, Katrina, or neither - but I do know that the mood seems to get more jumpy, more impatient, darker every month. I believe S&H would consider that a key sign of a pre-Regeneracy 4T.

Indeed. I would be very surprised if they didn't.

Originally Posted by Mr. Reed

I bet you won't be thinking that if, three years from now, America is engaged in a vicious civil war or if America is in a fully totalitarian state. Keep in mind that such eras contain much more suffering than 3T eras. But of course, they contain a lot of very good moments too.

I realize the gravity of any 4T, but 4Ts bring a clean slate, and there's nothing this country is more in need of. A reboot. A reset clock. A good recharge.

Also, despite the rampant apathy and cynicism of any 3T, this country has a strong democratic tradition that rejects the unjust. We may be a country coming out of 20+ years of celebrity worship and civic disengagement, but we are also the country of Washington, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, and great movements, from the Revolution to abolitionism to women's suffrage to labor to civil rights.

I have faith that many of us will be fighting in one manner or another for what is right.

Originally Posted by 1990

I realize the gravity of any 4T, but 4Ts bring a clean slate, and there's nothing this country is more in need of. A reboot. A reset clock. A good recharge.

Also, despite the rampant apathy and cynicism of any 3T, this country has a strong democratic tradition that rejects the unjust. We may be a country coming out of 20+ years of celebrity worship and civic disengagement, but we are also the country of Washington, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, and great movements, from the Revolution to abolitionism to women's suffrage to labor to civil rights.

I have faith that many of us will be fighting in one manner or another for what is right.

Let's hope so.

Originally Posted by 1990

I realize the gravity of any 4T, but 4Ts bring a clean slate, and there's nothing this country is more in need of. A reboot. A reset clock. A good recharge.

Yeah. Because that's just what the early-20th-century Russian 4T brought.

We should all look forward to everything being overtly destroyed and then whoever is strongest getting to take over what's left and build it as they want...

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Yeah. Because that's just what the early-20th-century Russian 4T brought.

We should all look forward to everything being overtly destroyed and then whoever is strongest getting to take over what's left and build it as they want...

Geez man, you is one cynical dude. At least the Russians in 1917 *thought* they were founding a new utopia. They could at least have the idealism, have the dream, for a little while.

Originally Posted by 1990

I can't yet point to a 4T catalyst - 9/11, Katrina, or neither - but I do know that the mood seems to get more jumpy, more impatient, darker every month. I believe S&H would consider that a key sign of a pre-Regeneracy 4T.

Both 9/11 and Katrina are catalysts. They both play a unique role in the "cascade period" (or pre-regeneracy) that is slowly, but innevitably, leading up to the regeneracy. One event ushered in a brief period of national solidarity, as America rallied behind Bush to support the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (both were done in rapid sucession w/ little political deliberation). This period constituted a false-regeneracy that was abruptly ended with Katrina - setting in motion the degeneracy. Katrina brought a rude awakening towards the American people, who responded by repudiating Bush and voting out the Republican majority in Congress. Now public distrust is growing rapidly and the nation's faith in government is approuching new lows. The national mood is at a tipping point, and I believe that it may take one last cataylst before we witness significant change.

Originally Posted by 1990

Geez man, you is one cynical dude. At least the Russians in 1917 *thought* they were founding a new utopia. They could at least have the idealism, have the dream, for a little while.

And "Utopia" pretty much nails it to the wall, doesn't it? For The Bolshevik wasn't a Crisis... it was the climax of an Awakening, a down-with-the-establishment countercultural revolution. World War 2 was a Crisis for Russia just like it was for everyone else involved in it, or affected by it. As with the rest of Europe, the 4T ended a few years after it did in America because the Continent... Russia included... was so devastated. This explains why their next 2T didn't begin until 1968 or so (Prague Spring) and how didn't end until the breakup of the Soviet state in 1989-91. Right now Russia is still in a mid-to-late 3T, which explains the apparently kick-ass-yuppie business climate Justin describes in St. Pete... perhaps analagous to our own late '90s dot-com bubble.

Originally Posted by 1990

Geez man, you is one cynical dude. At least the Russians in 1917 *thought* they were founding a new utopia. They could at least have the idealism, have the dream, for a little while.

Wake up son! It's 2007. It's not the time to be upbeat.

Have no illusions about the coming crisis. It will be hard, dirty, and incredibly difficult. We'll have numerous friends and family dead or horribly injured, with us possibly being one of them. The poverty rate will rise and we should expect riots across the country.

That is the best case scenario.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Yeah. Because that's just what the early-20th-century Russian 4T brought.

We should all look forward to everything being overtly destroyed and then whoever is strongest getting to take over what's left and build it as they want...

The US has a tradition of Liberal Democracy and peaceful transfer of power (it was the FIRST Liberal Democracy as well). Russia didn't, and still doesn't.

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

And "Utopia" pretty much nails it to the wall, doesn't it? For The Bolshevik wasn't a Crisis... it was the climax of an Awakening, a down-with-the-establishment countercultural revolution...

You're like, impenetrable! A juggernaut!...
You and Xenakis! Who would have thought?!

Suffice to say, the October Revolution was as much a 'down-with-the-establishment' Awakening as was the US' little 'down-with-the-establishment' consciousness revolution of 1776. Absolutely nothing whatsoever about Russian soceity at the time has any hallmarks at all of a 2T mood.

And as for the time being, these days Russian society is about the furthest one could get from the hyper-individualistic 3T. I sort of grew up during one of those. I'm pretty sure I know what they look like. Whereas a 3T is a time of the individual smashing through the last crumbling boundaries on his own, the early 1T is a time when the boundaries constructed in the previous decade are firmed-up, and the individual becomes less and less likely to be able to maneuver outside of an established structure. That is, the Anti-3T. Which is, again, very clearly where Russia sits, socially and economically these days. There's room for the entrepreneur, but not for the rebel.

Originally Posted by 1990

At least the Russians in 1917 *thought* they were founding a new utopia. They could at least have the idealism, have the dream, for a little while.

Not hardly. The vast majority of the country sat-out the October Revolution from an ideological standpoint. As Solzhenitsyn said, if the Whites had offered the people something -- anything -- to fight for, they would have won. The problem was that the regime was at its crumbling end, and Lenin's boys were the party that came out on top of the struggle. What I think you're seeing is the fact that all revolutionaries use utopian language -- it gains them soldiers and support.
I'm reading a novel that was written during Lenin's later days (Двенадцать Стулев - Twelve chairs) set in the early post-Revolution days. One thing's for sure - even then people weren't taking the mass of the propaganda seriously; they had a new government, and were ready to give it a go. But Utopia? Only the ideologues even began to think that way -- and there weren't very many of them.

Originally Posted by Odin

The US has a tradition of Liberal Democracy and peaceful transfer of power (it was the FIRST Liberal Democracy as well).

What difference does that make?
Do you somehow claim that America is peopled exclusively by the New Democratic Man?

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I'm reading a novel that was written during Lenin's later days (Двенадцать Стулев - Twelve chairs) set in the early post-Revolution days. One thing's for sure - even then people weren't taking the mass of the propaganda seriously; they had a new government, and were ready to give it a go. But Utopia? Only the ideologues even began to think that way -- and there weren't very many of them.

Hey Justin -- should we get them to watch or read Doctor Zhivago? Maybe then they'll get it... nobody cared about what the Bolsheviks said; they were just glad the incompetents were gone. And the opening scenes, the workers marching into the soulless 1930's Stalinist factory... there's no way that's a 3T image. 1T all the way.