Thanks for the welcome, I have to respectfully disagree. I agree with James Gouldings take on the situation. 2001-2024. I feel that the so called cluster fuck as you stated is going to be the climax. Time will tell

Originally Posted by HomerJS49

Thanks for the welcome, I have to respectfully disagree. I agree with James Gouldings take on the situation. 2001-2024. I feel that the so called cluster fuck as you stated is going to be the climax. Time will tell

9/11 triggered a turning change that was abortive, this is because the event wasn't big enough to overcome that the generations hadn't aged enough by 2001 to totally fill each phase of life. Also the Housing/Credit boom delayed the major economic downturn associated with a 4T, thus preserving a 3T mood.

If I'm not mistaken isn't there 3 phases to the 4th T? To reiterate, the catalyst was 9/11 and possibly Katrina. The regeneracy by S&H standards says that it BINDS us to a crisis course. IMHO we are already bound to a crisis course. Everything is pointing to it. I'm always asking myself 'How much longer can things go on this way?' Whether it's Iraq the fiscal course of the current administration or a combination of the two (which I prefer), THE CRISIS IS LOOMING! We are bound to the climax to come. The tipping point could happen any day now.

Originally Posted by HomerJS49

If I'm not mistaken isn't there 3 phases to the 4th T? To reiterate, the catalyst was 9/11 and possibly Katrina. The regeneracy by S&H standards says that it BINDS us to a crisis course. IMHO we are already bound to a crisis course. Everything is pointing to it. I'm always asking myself 'How much longer can things go on this way?' Whether it's Iraq the fiscal course of the current administration or a combination of the two (which I prefer), THE CRISIS IS LOOMING! We are bound to the climax to come. The tipping point could happen any day now.

I smell wishful thinking. Bush is Hoover, not FDR, and anyone who thinks Bush is FDR is off his rocker. This administration's BS economic policy is part of catalyst and so is this BS war.

How am I thinking Bush is FDR? I'm missing something.

Originally Posted by HomerJS49

How am I thinking Bush is FDR? I'm missing something.

Your post sounds like you want W as the Grey Champion.

Sorry, maybe I should elaborate.

Fourth Turnings in History pg. 261:
The next summer, following the Union debacle at Bull Run, the Crisis reached regeneracy. When Lincoln declared that Black Monday and ordered the immediate enlistment of half a million soldiers. ... suspension of due process, and martial law amid a catastrophic spiral of organized butchery.

The Iraq war is similar: so many soldiers being butchered, suspension of due process, very close to martial law which could happen at any time from all accounts. This is similar to the Civil War regeneracy leading to the climax. But there may be an interesting twist because we're also nearing a financial crisis in addition partly due to Iraq and partly due to unscrupulous business practices. If I'm not mistaken the regeneracy leads to the crisis climax.

You said,"9/11 triggered a turning change that was abortive, this is because the event wasn't big enough to overcome that the generations hadn't aged enough by 2001 to totally fill each phase of life.

S&H say, "The civil War experience thus offers two lessons: first , that the 4th T morphology admits to acceleration, and second, that acceleration can add tragedy to the outcome.

Originally Posted by HomerJS49

Sorry, maybe I should elaborate.

Fourth Turnings in History pg. 261:
The next summer, following the Union debacle at Bull Run, the Crisis reached regeneracy. When Lincoln declared that Black Monday and ordered the immediate enlistment of half a million soldiers. ... suspension of due process, and martial law amid a catastrophic spiral of organized butchery.

The Iraq war is similar: so many soldiers being butchered, suspension of due process, very close to martial law which could happen at any time from all accounts. This is similar to the Civil War regeneracy leading to the climax. But there may be an interesting twist because we're also nearing a financial crisis in addition partly due to Iraq and partly due to unscrupulous business practices. If I'm not mistaken the regeneracy leads to the crisis climax.

You said,"9/11 triggered a turning change that was abortive, this is because the event wasn't big enough to overcome that the generations hadn't aged enough by 2001 to totally fill each phase of life.

S&H say, "The civil War experience thus offers two lessons: first , that the 4th T morphology admits to acceleration, and second, that acceleration can add tragedy to the outcome.

As a stated, 9/11 wasn't big enough to trigger an anomaly. It resulted in a temporary "false regeneracy" that fell apart during the run-up to the Iraq War. The real regeneracy will probably occur in 2008 and we will have a 4T of normal length, the first half of which will have an anti-war mood similar to that of the 1930s as a result of the Iraq War.

Originally Posted by Odin

Your post sounds like you want W as the Grey Champion.

Naah. I, for one, want him in an orange jumpsuit. Being fed at federal expense for the next 5 years.

Originally Posted by Odin

As a stated, 9/11 wasn't big enough to trigger an anomaly. It resulted in a temporary "false regeneracy" that fell apart during the run-up to the Iraq War. The real regeneracy will probably occur in 2008 and we will have a 4T of normal length, the first half of which will have an anti-war mood similar to that of the 1930s as a result of the Iraq War.

Well, since no one knows the future we can only speculate. Thanks to S&H we have an idea of it ,though the exact timeline etc. we'll just have to wait and see. I remain in my belief that Iraq will ultimately lead to the climax. Peace

Sorry, y'all, but I'm gonna hafta agree with Odin here.

Iraq and Vietnam! Two wars at nearly opposite ends of the saeculum, and yet so very similiar in the way that the foot-dragging continues and nothing concrete seems to be accomplished toward settlement. One's desert the other is jungle, and that seems to be about the only difference. Yet with rare exceptions, the protests that have occurred against the Iraq war have not been nearly as vehement as those that occurred stateside during the Vietnam war.

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

Iraq and Vietnam! Two wars at nearly opposite ends of the saeculum, and yet so very similiar in the way that the foot-dragging continues and nothing concrete seems to be accomplished toward settlement. One's desert the other is jungle, and that seems to be about the only difference. Yet with rare exceptions, the protests that have occurred against the Iraq war have not been nearly as vehement as those that occurred stateside during the Vietnam war.

The Cons I believe see what they wanted to accomplish as 'Total War' because it was/is their intention to overthrow all the governments in the region.

From Alternet:
On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war -- not just with Iraq, but "total war," as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents -- be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career military officers -- is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East -- a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.

I read in 'Armed Madhouse' that this was also the way the Cons in the pentagon were viewing it.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/13990/

Anxious About Tomorrow
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times Saturday 01 September 2007
You know you've stepped into a different universe when you hear a major American labor leader saying matter-of-factly that employer-based health insurance and employer-based pensions are relics of a bygone industrial economy.
Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has 1.9 million members and is the fastest-growing union in the country, is not your ordinary union leader. With Labor Day approaching, he was reflecting on some of the challenges facing workers in a post-20th-century globalized economy.
"I just don't think that as a country we've conceptualized that this is not our father's or our grandfather's economy," Mr. Stern said in an interview. "We're going through profound change and we have no plan."
The feeling that seems to override all others for workers is anxiety. American families, already saddled with enormous debt, are trying to make it in an environment in which employment is becoming increasingly contingent and subject to worldwide competition. Health insurance, unaffordable for millions, is a huge problem. And guaranteed pensions are going the way of typewriter ribbons and carbon paper.
"We're ending defined benefit pensions in front of our eyes," said Mr. Stern. "I'd say today's retirement plan for young workers is: 'I'm going to work until I die.'"
The result of all of this - along with such problems as the mortgage and housing crisis, and a domestic economy that is doing nothing to improve living standards for ordinary Americans - is fear.
"Workers are incredibly, legitimately scared that the American dream, particularly the belief that their kids will do better, is ending," said Mr. Stern. He is trying to get across the idea that in a period of such profound change, the old templates, the traditional ideas and policies of even the most progressive thinkers and officeholders, will not be sufficient to meet the new challenges.
"We can't be the only country on earth that asks our employers to put the price of health care on its products when a lot of our competitors don't," he said. "And job security? Even if you want to stay with your employer, as in the old economic model, we're seeing in many industries that your employer is not going to be around to stay with you."
A comprehensive new approach is needed, but what should that approach be? Franklin Roosevelt always hoped to inject a measure of economic security into the lives of ordinary Americans. But the New Deal was seven decades ago. Workers are insecure now for a host of different reasons and Mr. Stern wants the labor movement to be part of a vast cooperative effort to develop the solutions appropriate to today's environment.
He told me, "I'd like to say to the Democrats that we are as far today from the New Deal as the New Deal was from the Civil War."
He wants more people to pay attention to the big issues that affect not just union workers but all working families: How do you bring health care to all? What do you do about retirement security? How will the jobs of the 21st century be created?
And what about schools, energy, global warming, the environment?
Mr. Stern tends to see the nation as a team and wants the team to pull together to develop a creative vision of what the U.S. should be about in the 21st century. A cornerstone of that vision, he said, should be adherence to the "primary value" of rewarding work.
"We're a team in the 21st-century period of rapid change and competition," he said. "And right now, we don't have leadership, and we don't have a plan. At the same time, a group of people are enriching themselves far beyond anything that's reasonable."
What he would like to see, he said, is a large group of thoughtful people from various walks of American life - business, labor, government, academia and so forth - convened to begin the serious work of cooperatively developing a real-world vision of a society that is fairer, healthier, better educated, better prepared to compete globally, and more economically secure.
"I think you're already seeing the beginnings of odd formations of people who appreciate, issue by issue, that we have to do something different here," he said.
The kind of effort Mr. Stern would like to see would logically be initiated at the highest levels of government, preferably the White House. But if that's not in the cards, someone else should take up the challenge. And there should be a sense of urgency about it.
The fears of America's workers are well founded. "There's something wrong with the system right now," said Mr. Stern, "and we can't just say, 'Well, it's all going to work out.' It's not."

Originally Posted by HomerJS49

Thanks for the welcome, I have to respectfully disagree. I agree with James Gouldings take on the situation. 2001-2024. I feel that the so called cluster fuck as you stated is going to be the climax. Time will tell

I think you're both sorta right. I still think 9/11 was the Catalyst because that's the point people still look back to as when things began to go wrong. But since it arrived early, we've instead entered a protracted, pre-regeneracy Cascade Phase of a 4T. This 4T been a slow-roll... like one of those rare #1 hit singles that takes six months to get there from the bottom of the charts. But the Social Moment... the point at which most people wake up to the fact that we're in big trouble... happened with Katrina and the Iraq War CF. Now, with the Credit Bubble about to burst and the '08 elections upon us, the Regeneracy is surely at hand.

Originally Posted by Mr. Reed

Anxious About Tomorrow
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times Saturday 01 September 2007
You know you've stepped into a different universe when you hear a major American labor leader saying matter-of-factly that employer-based health insurance and employer-based pensions are relics of a bygone industrial economy.
Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has 1.9 million members and is the fastest-growing union in the country, is not your ordinary union leader. With Labor Day approaching, he was reflecting on some of the challenges facing workers in a post-20th-century globalized economy.
"I just don't think that as a country we've conceptualized that this is not our father's or our grandfather's economy," Mr. Stern said in an interview. "We're going through profound change and we have no plan."
The feeling that seems to override all others for workers is anxiety. American families, already saddled with enormous debt, are trying to make it in an environment in which employment is becoming increasingly contingent and subject to worldwide competition. Health insurance, unaffordable for millions, is a huge problem. And guaranteed pensions are going the way of typewriter ribbons and carbon paper.
"We're ending defined benefit pensions in front of our eyes," said Mr. Stern. "I'd say today's retirement plan for young workers is: 'I'm going to work until I die.'"
The result of all of this - along with such problems as the mortgage and housing crisis, and a domestic economy that is doing nothing to improve living standards for ordinary Americans - is fear.
"Workers are incredibly, legitimately scared that the American dream, particularly the belief that their kids will do better, is ending," said Mr. Stern. He is trying to get across the idea that in a period of such profound change, the old templates, the traditional ideas and policies of even the most progressive thinkers and officeholders, will not be sufficient to meet the new challenges.
"We can't be the only country on earth that asks our employers to put the price of health care on its products when a lot of our competitors don't," he said. "And job security? Even if you want to stay with your employer, as in the old economic model, we're seeing in many industries that your employer is not going to be around to stay with you."
A comprehensive new approach is needed, but what should that approach be? Franklin Roosevelt always hoped to inject a measure of economic security into the lives of ordinary Americans. But the New Deal was seven decades ago. Workers are insecure now for a host of different reasons and Mr. Stern wants the labor movement to be part of a vast cooperative effort to develop the solutions appropriate to today's environment.
He told me, "I'd like to say to the Democrats that we are as far today from the New Deal as the New Deal was from the Civil War."
He wants more people to pay attention to the big issues that affect not just union workers but all working families: How do you bring health care to all? What do you do about retirement security? How will the jobs of the 21st century be created?
And what about schools, energy, global warming, the environment?
Mr. Stern tends to see the nation as a team and wants the team to pull together to develop a creative vision of what the U.S. should be about in the 21st century. A cornerstone of that vision, he said, should be adherence to the "primary value" of rewarding work.
"We're a team in the 21st-century period of rapid change and competition," he said. "And right now, we don't have leadership, and we don't have a plan. At the same time, a group of people are enriching themselves far beyond anything that's reasonable."
What he would like to see, he said, is a large group of thoughtful people from various walks of American life - business, labor, government, academia and so forth - convened to begin the serious work of cooperatively developing a real-world vision of a society that is fairer, healthier, better educated, better prepared to compete globally, and more economically secure.
"I think you're already seeing the beginnings of odd formations of people who appreciate, issue by issue, that we have to do something different here," he said.
The kind of effort Mr. Stern would like to see would logically be initiated at the highest levels of government, preferably the White House. But if that's not in the cards, someone else should take up the challenge. And there should be a sense of urgency about it.
The fears of America's workers are well founded. "There's something wrong with the system right now," said Mr. Stern, "and we can't just say, 'Well, it's all going to work out.' It's not."

Yup, the Regeneracy will definitely be a-comin' next year! Somebody cue Georg Friedrich Handel's "Messiah"!

Originally Posted by sean '90

Yup, the Regeneracy will definitely be a-comin' next year! Somebody cue Georg Friedrich Handel's "Messiah"!

Hallalujah? Or "And He shall purify..."?

Myself, I'd go for "Every valley shall be exalted -- especially with the last line of the phrase "And the crooked made straight."

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Hallalujah? Or "And He shall purify..."?

Myself, I'd go for "Every valley shall be exalted -- especially with the last line of the phrase "And the crooked made straight."

Yes, Hallelujah. Martin Luther King, Jr. singlehandedly proves why we go atheist at our peril. He's also one of my favorite heroes.

Originally Posted by dbookwoym

Something on the order of $250 billion worth of subprime home mortgages are set to reset to higher rates next year.

This translates to a bit over 1 million mortgages, perhaps 1-2% of all outstanding mortgages. Suppose all of them default. Then 1-2% of the assets behind mortgage paper evaporate, meaning large diversified holders of mortgage paper suffer a 1-2% drop in their annual return. And if the same thing happens next year and the year after that they will continue to take 1%-2% haircuts each year. But the interest paid by those mortgages that haven't defaulted will outweigh the capital losses from default. Houses are not stocks. Their intrinsic value is not close to zero. A fall in house value is not going to produce a deflationary spiral.

It will shake out highly leveraged players. I'm sure most folks who bought ARMs had no down payment. So if they walk away, what are they out? A depreciating house that the lenders are stuck with? Assuming they were making their payments before the rate increased, can they not afford to rent?

If they did have a down payment, then the value of the house, even with a 10-15% fall in price would still be more than the amount borrowed. They can sell the house and get out of their debt. They will have lost tens of thousands of dollars, but that is what investing is about for the little guy.

Originally Posted by HomerJS49

The Cons I believe see what they wanted to accomplish as 'Total War' because it was/is their intention to overthrow all the governments in the region.

From Alternet:
On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war -- not just with Iraq, but "total war," as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents -- be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career military officers -- is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East -- a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.

I read in 'Armed Madhouse' that this was also the way the Cons in the pentagon were viewing it.

I don't doubt that the neo-cons would like to remake the Middle East by force. I just get upset with the gap between 'total war' and what they end up doing.

Our high tech armed forces can beat conventional armies in stand up battle quite effectively, but it takes a lot of boots on the ground to suppress insurgency. We might possibly have swept the Middle East from one side to the other, defeating and destroying all combined conventional forces, but that would achieve nothing. We haven't the troops to suppress insurrection in both Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. How could we increase the amount of people we try to take under our control?

Then too, proxy war is not total war. During the Cold War, when either power attempted to seize control of an area against the interests of the local population, the opposite power would arm, train and otherwise support the local population. One shipped a few guns to the freedom fighters, sat back, and watched one's rival power get quagmired. In an era of nukes, Hitler style total war is very much out of fashion. Quagmiring an opponent is far more cost effective.

And how is the neocon policy total war when we haven't taken back the 'peace dividend,' returning the military budgets to Cold War levels?

I attended a Boston Futurist Society meeting on the future of warfare. The featured speaker was a Newport / Naval Warfare Center think tank fellow who thought high tech as a force multiplier could allow the US to win wars easily and painlessly. If one is in the high tech arms industry, one wants to project a worldview where throwing money at the high tech arms industry seems a good idea. This was before 9.11. The gist was that if the US bought enough fancy toys, they could not be threatened and could project power abroad to win any conflict. This was the premise the Rumsfeld drove, that the neocons assumed true.

It seems some are still buying into it.

Anyway, yah. I'm preaching to the converted. My major nitpick is that folk have to start differentiating between total war and proxy war, and figuring that supporting insurrection by proxy is a lot more cost effective than attempting to suppress an insurrection against an unpopular regime.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I attended a Boston Futurist Society meeting on the future of warfare. The featured speaker was a Newport / Naval Warfare Center think tank fellow who thought high tech as a force multiplier could allow the US to win wars easily and painlessly. If one is in the high tech arms industry, one wants to project a worldview where throwing money at the high tech arms industry seems a good idea. This was before 9.11. The gist was that if the US bought enough fancy toys, they could not be threatened and could project power abroad to win any conflict. This was the premise the Rumsfeld drove, that the neocons assumed true.

It seems some are still buying into it.

Just a thought: How much money could we save if we cut a lot of the pork floating around the DoD?

Originally Posted by Odin

Just a thought: How much money could we save if we cut a lot of the pork floating around the DoD?

Probably billions.

Originally Posted by Odin

Just a thought: How much money could we save if we cut a lot of the pork floating around the DoD?

The real problem is what to cut. Some ideas and spending are actually beneficial ... even more than the proponents argue, in some cases. Others are just money transfers to favored local businesses, or political gravy for the home district. We can do with out the second group entirely, but some of the good ideas are truly stunning. We need them.

So, who do we hire to separate the wheat from the chaff? Lately, we've been getting a lot of the latter, and damn little of the former. The GOPpers have zero credibilty, and, up to this point, the Dems aren't looking too good either.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

The real problem is what to cut. Some ideas and spending are actually beneficial ... even more than the proponents argue, in some cases. Others are just money transfers to favored local businesses, or political gravy for the home district. We can do with out the second group entirely, but some of the good ideas are truly stunning. We need them.

So, who do we hire to separate the wheat from the chaff? Lately, we've been getting a lot of the latter, and damn little of the former. The GOPpers have zero credibilty, and, up to this point, the Dems aren't looking too good either.

Procurement is, perhaps, our biggest curse. Farming out projects to every district, and all the other tricks has made rational decision making very, very difficult. The V-22 Osprey is a prime example of just how wrong the process can go...as is the SDI program.

In the coming 4T, infantry will gain priority, as will basic air and sealift capacities. James Dunnigan predicted thirty years afo that the entire military budget would be spent on just one aircraft, and he's not far off with the way F-22, B-2, and JSF have gone. That will come to an end. I'm not terribly sorry that drones will replace my AFSC.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

The real problem is what to cut. Some ideas and spending are actually beneficial ... even more than the proponents argue, in some cases. Others are just money transfers to favored local businesses, or political gravy for the home district. We can do with out the second group entirely, but some of the good ideas are truly stunning. We need them.

So, who do we hire to separate the wheat from the chaff? Lately, we've been getting a lot of the latter, and damn little of the former. The GOPpers have zero credibilty, and, up to this point, the Dems aren't looking too good either.

My main concern is that all that military spending is a very strong Keynesian economic stimulus, just cutting it and not somehow finding another way of pumping it into the economy would lead to an economic disaster. Put the money into public works (like a national rail system) and a national service for young adults, perhaps?