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The Great Flood

There is little doubt that the amount of water on earth really does not change. There is simply what is known as the Water Cycle whereby evaporation moves water to the sky and then it is redistributed as rain elsewhere. Therefore, the likelihood of an actual flood in Biblical terms that covered the entire world is unlikely. What we do know is that there is a wealth of evidence that the movement of the plates clearly resulted in the great flood that created the Mediterranean sea and there is also evidence that there are cities under the Black Sea no less the Mediterranean.

There is evidence that there was a tremendous flood when there was a break in the land at the Straits of Gibralter. What has surfaced is evidence that when that breach took place, the water rushed into the basin at probably around 100 mph. This is certainly something that would be remembered and probably handed down from generation to generation. (see Scientific American)

Nevertheless, it is also obvious that the sea level has risen in the Mediterranean even since the time of Julius Caesar (100-44BC).  The city of ancient Alexandria in Egypt lies below the sea. Obviously, even in relatively modern times, the sea level has risen flooding communities. So actually stating definitively when did the Biblical Event of the flood take place is difficult to pinpoint because there have been great floods from 3 million years ago to 2,000 years ago.  What is certain is that the sea levels have risen and fallen and this is part of nature – not instigated by humans.

Keep Going. This Too Shall Pass.

Keep Going. This Too Shall Pass.

Like the weather when a storm approaches, or as the seasons turn, or waves pounding on a shoreline, any deviations are measured and compared by speed and intensity.  The same can be said for headlines:  Omnibus, discouraged Deplorables, rumors of war, prospects of peace, economic bubbles, fluctuating markets, and political intrigue.  Round and round it goes; when it ends, nobody knows. It’s a time of transition; and when traveling over mountaintops, through valleys, and on rough seas, no one has all of the answers.

Even when looking at maps.

The books, Generations (1992) and The Fourth Turning (1997), were written by the historians William Strauss and Neil Howe. These recent explorers identified recorded cycles of history and categorized them across multiple cultures and eras.  In both books, historical timelines were analyzed and populations were correlated to specific life-cycles labeled as generational types.  Strauss and Howe additionally addressed the concept of time in the context of both circular and linear perspectives and defined what is called a “saeculum” as a “long human life” measuring roughly 80 to 90 years.  Every saeculum is comprised of four turnings, each lasting around 20 years.

Just as there are four seasons consisting of spring, summer, fall and winter, there are also four phases of a human life represented in childhood, young adulthood, middle age and elderhood.  As each phase of human life represents approximately 20 years, so is each generational archetype identified within the historical cycles, or turnings, as follows.

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How Do We Really Forecast the Future?

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; It is obvious that you have indeed been behind the curtain for your knowledge of even global politics is amazing. Kim Jong Un is here in Beijing. You said he would back down. You said the risk of war lies in the Middle East, not Korea. Your model calls the markets. You said the Dow would bounce for two days and then turn down. Even that took place today. Where do you begin and the computer ends?

UGH

ANSWER: That is a hard question to answer. The computer can show me the region for conflict. That is determined by cyclical trends for each region yet at times it is augmented by a combination of capital flows. Picking things like the fall of communism back in 1989 and picking when the Berlin Wall would fall were based cyclically on the outcome of that trend. That was 72 years from the Russian Revolution of 1917. That was the perfect target for the volatility models within the ECM. Both converged so it made it really a piece of cake.

The collapse of the Soviet Union came in 1991, that was a simple 2-year reactionary process all within a cyclical forecast. Now, the collapse of the Russian bond market which set in motion a major contagion and the Long-Term Capital Management debacle was determined from a capital flow and cyclical perspective. That came 8.6 years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. When that forecast made the front page of the second section of the FT, that is when even the CIA came. They suddenly realized that our model could forecast the rise and fall of nations. But that is also when the bankers began to complain to the CFTC and SEC that I was “manipulating” the world economy because they were all long Russian bonds and blamed me for their losses using the FT article as proof. They said I had too much “influence” rather than consider the possibility that just maybe we were able to forecast events that they thought bribing politicians would prevent.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is their a Social Cycle in Attitudes?

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; I read your article of the whole issue of prostitution. The entire problem is that some western women assume that all prostitutes engage in the profession unwillingly. That is just so biased. What about the women who marry not for love but for money. They are not forced. When the Iron Curtain fell, many Western European men married Eastern Europeans. They were shocked to realize that Eastern women saw life in a different culture. They looked for men who could support them and they saw this as a tradition they stayed home and raised the children. Their attitudes were pre-sixties. You are correct, culture is different around the world. It is stupid to judge everything by only your own standards. Indian and Thai food is spicier than European, American, and certainly Italian. Even food differs greatly around the world as do attitudes and culture. To a West European or American woman, staying at home is subservient. They have not been to the Middle East. I just read that Saudi Arabia is allowing women to drive for the first time.

I recall you even showing a Roman prostitute token used to circumvent laws back then. Have you ever investigated a cycle in attitudes in the battle of the sexes? It appears we seem to have emerged from the sixties with hippies, free love, and some women who just hate men blaming them for everything. I am not even sure where the whole virgin thing came from but assume that is probably in there as well. That was so obvious with Hillary thinking all women should vote for her just because she was a woman. That really offended the younger girls in our office. If there is a cycle in everything, then is there one in this battle as well?

UT

Pompei-Lupanar Brothel

ANSWER: Yes there is a cycle to everything. Yes, the Emperor Tiberius (14-37AD) attempted to ban prostitution by making it illegal to pay a prostitute with a coin that had the emperor’s portrait of which they all did. The solution was to issue tokens (pictured above) you bought and paid the prostitute and she would redeem them later. These were widespread throughout the empire – not just Rome. One was recently found in the Thames Riverin London back in 2012. Here is a picture of the brothel in Pompeii. There were various prices that depended upon the sex act, but then there was also a two-tier price level over privacy. If you wanted a private room, that was the most expensive. If you wanted to save money, then you could have the room at street level where people could watch.

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The Collapse of Society – Are the Doom & Gloomers Even on the Right Page?

QUESTION: Hey Marty,
Thanks for the incredible information you are sharing. I subscribe to your service and read your blog every day.
Do preppers have any justification in planning for a complete collapse, be it economic, political or otherwise? I keep a 30 day supply of freeze dried food but I have friends that are much more serious in their stockpile.

Thanks!

DL

ANSWER: The end of the world scenarios that the doomsday people forecast are over the top. If things unfolded as they proclaim, there would be no point in preparing for there would be nothing left. Movies like the Planet of the Apes were based upon this theory. The likelihood that there will be an economic and political upheaval is 100% on point.

I have recommended keeping a stash of food, but notfor the reasons they put out there by the doom & gloom people. The winters are going to keep getting colder. As they do, this will also disrupt the food supply. I have warned that historically, it is Global Cooling that kills off people – not Global Warming.  Additionally, as political unrest rises, there will also be a disruption in the food supply. The majority of people are incapable of growing food for themselves, so society as a whole has this great vulnerability as was the case in in the eternal city of Rome. I simply look at history and there is no agenda in what I publish. We are entitled to just the facts.

Historically, as taxes kept rising, and public safety became a growing concern in the urban life, more and more people began to migrate leaving Rome walking away from their property. There is simply a cycle where we all come together to form great societies, the ruling class becomes greedy, and then the cycle turns we migrate back to suburbia.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What We Face Requires a Cyclical Perspective

 

To survive what we face clearly requires an open mind to understand that everything in nature moves through a cyclical pattern. The majority of people see the world only in a linear fashion. Politicians proclaim they can change the world and create perpetual prosperity and/or punish those that cause recessions. Naturally, there are no mirrors in government so the culprit must always exist outside of their shenanigans.

I often get the question WHAT IF everyone followed my work. The answer is simple. That is IMPOSSIBLE. That is like saying why can we all not just vote the same. There will never be a single political party that the people would vote for because there are differences of opinion. The majority of society ignores history because that is the past and somehow irrelevant because we are more sophisticated today and those people ran around in diapers chucking spears at each other. This merely ensures that history repeats because they are far too ignorant to comprehend that life is like a Shakespeare play. It has been performed for hundreds of years and the only thing that changes has been the actors.

Human society as a whole expects a linear life of happily ever after and when that fails, they advocate punishing the person responsible. They cannot dare investigate that just perhaps the world works in a far more complicated manner than just that.

Those who think only linear cannot avoid the crash and burn. Those who see the world cyclically understand there is a time and place for everything.

Cycles in Time – Origin of the Theory & Why It Was Ignored in Western Culture

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Just about every culture outside of Christianity believed in the cyclical aspects of time and nature. Do you have any idea why Western Christian culture failed to incorporate cyclical theory?

GN

ANSWER: If you actually read the Bible, you will find the very similar cyclical references and numbers. It just seems that the mainstream interpretation overlooked it post Dark Age. There is so much in there from the maxim that there is a time and place for everything to the Revelations that forecast the Devil will be cast into the abyss for 1,000 years and then it will begin again between the tribes of God and Magog. That describes a cycle. For some reason, the general religious teaching fails to point that aspect out. This seems to be rooted in the prejudice of the Dark Age for that is clearly a line of demarcation in every field of knowledge that was lost after the barbarian invasions.

Throughout the centuries, there has been an understanding of cycles that have come down to the present age through the corridors of time. There has been a knowledge that comes from the dim ages of past eras, that seems to emanate from all the races, as well as the different schools of thought. Just what is the origin of this basic understanding of cycles cannot be traced to some specific teaching by a single culture or person. There is unquestionably an unbroken direct line throughout the ages that extend further back than even the time of Greeks who the Romans viewed a knowledgeable. There are references to cycles that we find in many extracts that even go back to the ancient Egypt and Chaldea. These appear to have influenced the Pythagoras (about 500 bc) and Ancient Grecian arcane schools of philosophy. Where did they come from? The answer seems to stretch back to still more remote and arcane investigations of the universe and the heavens.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Checking In on the Four Intersecting Cycles

Checking In on the Four Intersecting Cycles

If you think this is a robust, resilient, stable system, please check your Ibogaine / Hopium / Delusionol intake.
Correspondent James D. recently asked for an update on the four intersecting cycles I’ve been writing about for the past 10 years. Here’s the chart I prepared back in 2008 of four long-term cycles:
1. Generational (political/social)
2. Price inflation/wage stagnation (economic)
3. Credit/debt expansion/contraction (financial)
4. Relative affordability of energy (resources)
Here are four of the many dozens of essays I’ve written on these topics over the past decade:
The key point that’s not communicated in the chart is there are dynamics that interact with each of these cycles. For example, demographics are influencing each of these trends in self-reinforcing ways.
Governments are borrowing more to fund the promises made to seniors decades ago when there were relatively few retirees compared to the working populace. Now that the ratio of those collecting government benefits to workers is 1-to-2 (one retiree for every worker), the system is buckling.
The “solution” is to borrow increasing sums from future taxpayers to fund pay-as-you-go healthcare and pension programs for retirees.
Technology is another dynamic that is actively influencing all these cycles in self-reinforcing ways. As technology is substituted for human labor, wages stagnate and the size of the populace paying taxes dwindles accordingly. The “solution” is once again to borrow more to substitute for declining purchasing power.
The dynamics driving wealth/income inequality and the rise of politically/financially dominant elites are also powering these cycles. As Peter Turchin has explained–a topic covered in my essay When Did Our Elites Become Self-Serving Parasites? (October 4, 2016)– social disunity / discord rises when the number of people promised a spot in the elite far exceeds the actual number of slots available.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Britain Buried in Snow Thanks to Global Warming & No Food?

The British Government forecasters have today issued the first red snow warning for five years as the UK braces for potentially the worst blizzards since 1962. Britain has seen as much snow as the Bizzard of 1962 and of course, they are blaming Global Warming. If it gets hot it is caused by man. When it gets cold, it’s our fault too. To the Global Warming crowd, God just simply does not exist. We are to blame for all things natural or unnatural. We have to respect that the historical record demonstrates that things can freeze very fast.

BritainI have been warning that the greatest danger we face is Global COOLING – not warming, and this is entirely a natural cycle. The heavy snow in Britain does more than keep people in their homes. It also prevents the delivery of food as supermarkets have nothing to sell. It is the cold that fosters disease and leads to pandemics. We will be praying for some heat by 2032. Be wise to stockpile extra food just in case.

I previously warned that the North Pole, which does move, was headed straight to Europe. The poles do MIGRATE and have NEVER been fixed. 2016 was the coldest year Britain has seen in 58 years. Even last winter, Europe was seriously frozen. Looks like 2018 is beating that record. There have been DEEP FREEZEevents during 1700s. Britain is moving into an Ice Age and the sooner we respect that, the better off we will be.

The energy output of the Sum is declining toward a Solar Minimum which is the Fastest Decline in almost 10,000 Years. This is highly unusual and it is hard to forecast specific regions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Worst Drought in Capetown in 112 Years – Part of the Cycle

QUESTION: Marty,

Any thoughts/comments regarding the impending water shortage in Capetown? As a person who has much historical knowledge, are you aware of a major city such as Capetown ever running out of water? Or is this truly a historical first?

Love your blog as it covers so much information and isn’t just corporate financial data like so many others.

Your loyal reader from

Alan.

ANSWER: South Africa will score this season the worse drought since 1904 right on schedule on the 112-year cycle (1/2 224). We must respect that the climate is changing back to a dry cold period and this has impacted South Africa. This is also part of the cycle we see with rising food prices into 2024. Just as we have seen the coldest periods in the USA back to 1899, we are witnessing the worst drought in Capetown also back to the same general period. Unfortunately, yes they can run out of water on this cycle. It will be a very close call.

The Cycle of Disease – It’s Just our Time

COMMENT: Sir,

It’s interesting, since your post on Madagascar and the pneumonic plague, I have Surveilled a site dealing with medical news once a week. What’s really interesting is the resurgence of older well-known entities such as cholera

Zambia has been hard hit with over 2000 cases of cholera with close to 50 deaths. The university is closed as well as other institutions. It has migrated from the urban areas to the suburban areas. The armed forces have been called out to help. Tanzania has shut its borders with Zambia due to this. Kenya has had 4 kid cases of hospitalization.

ProMED-mail post

Influenza strains are hitting geographic regions. The H3n2 is has hit Australia very hard and is currently hitting the UK. The US is also being infected. India has the H1N1 variant hitting them hard.

The avian flu has led to the culling of birds in the Middle East particularly Egypt and Iran. Saudia Arabia just had 6 new cases. Russia and Swiss poultry also have cases.
China has Influenza B hitting them hard but cannot confirm type nor number of cases and comparison numbers.

When it rains…. it pours.

Keep up the good work

DK

REPLY: The influenza virus changes its genetic makeup every year and complies with guess what – cyclical analysis! This constantly changing virus presents a cyclical challenge to medical science, and consequently, this makes it impossible to create a single vaccine to prevent the disease for life. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) monitor each new strain of influenza virus as it appears. They gather data and then try to predict which may be the predominant virus in the following year’s flu season.  Scientists then use this data to develop a vaccine each year against the specific virus they predict will predominate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Climate Change a Tool to Eliminate Democracy?

COMMENT: Your view on denying climate change is supporting the capitalist model. This shows you have no credibility.

OD

REPLY: Climate is changing and it is part of the normal cycle. You are actually correct that I support capitalism and freedom and am against authoritarianism and totalitarian systems. What you fail to understand is that climate change is an agenda to eliminate your freedom. The entire argument is to support a move toward an authoritarian state. You better wake up. This not truly about the climate, it is all about controlling society, eliminating democracy, and changing the entire economic model that changes society.


It’s a well-kept secret, but 95 per cent of the climate models we are told prove the link between human CO2 emissions and catastrophic global warming have been found, after nearly two decades of temperature stasis, to be in error. It’s not surprising.

We have been subjected to extravagance from climate catastrophists for close to 50 years.

In January 1970, Life magazine, based on “solid scientific evidence”, claimed that by 1985 air pollution would reduce the sunlight reaching the Earth by half. In fact, across that period sunlight fell by between 3 per cent and 5 per cent. In a 1971 speech, Paul Ehrlich said: “If I were a gambler I would take even money that ­England will not exist in the year 2000.”

Fast forward to March 2000 and David Viner, senior research scientist at the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, told The Independent, “Snowfalls are now a thing of the past.” In December 2010, the Mail Online reported, “Coldest December since records began as temperatures plummet to minus 10C bringing travel chaos across Britain”.

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2018 – Panic Cycle Year

QUESTION: Mr. Armsyrong; Thank you for an eye-opening conference. Can’t wait for this year. You said 2018 was a Panic Cycle Year and that it would be unlikely to create an outside reversal in the Dow, but we should expect wild times ahead. Is this panic cycle impacting many other markets as well?

JV

ANSWER: Yes. This is the beginning of the Monetary Crisis Cycle that will go into 2021. That is probably where we will see the dollar rally break the world monetary system. This year, we should expect most markets to test BOTH sides of the game so pay attention to the Global Market Watch and the Reversals. This will tell us when the trends shift. There will be the classic fool who thinks that just because the euro finally exceed last year’s high or gold has rallied that this is it and that means the next four years will be the same.

Panic Cycles are notorious for trapping people on either the long or short side. You always have to trap the majority in order to create the slingshot to the upside of the waterfall to the downside. This is why they remain fools for they rush in based upon a few day’s price action. So far, everything is running its course. We are finally getting closer to the 125 threshold of resistance in the euro and the pound sterling has rallied with many starting to bet that BREXIT will not happen. Buying the Euro because interest rates are expected to rise with the ECB backing off of QE is just not being thought through rationally. QE has FAILED to stimulate the economy after nearly 10 years, and all it has done is subsidize EU member states. Rates will rise when they start to have to sell to real buyers. Then the sentiment will shift mid-year and we will test the opposite side.

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Why Models Fail

 

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Did AIG use the Black-Scholes Model and that is what created the crisis again in 2007?

WJ

ANSWER: No. It’s my understanding that AIG developed different models, they called a “Value-at-Risk Model,” (VaR) which used a binomial-expansion-technique to start valuing their positions. I believe the original model was developed at Moody’s. However, like the Black-Scholes Model, it too lacked depth. In model development, it is extremely complex.

Virtually every model created tends to be predominately flat with a minimum of dynamic variables lacking understanding of TIME. Then the testing period lacks the database reflecting all conditions. In the case of Black-Scholes, they back-tested only with data to 1971. If I created a model with only data from 2009 forward, then it would be biased to presume a bull market is normal in the stock market.

The Value at risk (VaR) model is a measure of the risk of investments. It estimates how much a set of investments might lose, given normal market conditions, in a set time period such as a day. VaR is typically used by firms and regulators in the financial industry to gauge the number of assets needed to cover possible losses. It obviously failed in 2007-2009 because once again it was not a “normal market condition” for it fails utterly to understand CONTAGION when sound assets are sold to raise cash for other assets that collapse. The assumption of the model is its own nemesis.

For example, if a portfolio of stocks has a one-day 5% VaR of $10 million, this actually means that there is a 5% probability that the portfolio will fall in value by more than $1o million over a one-day period if there is no trading.

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Eight-Year Positive Cycle for Gold Starting Now

McClellan Financial says an eight-year cycle for gold is about to start and the next five years will likely be good ones

Via email from Tom McClellan, please consider Gold’s 8-Year Cycle.

We are now entering the upward phase of gold’s 8-year cycle, and that should bring some fun gains. And this comes at a time when gold has not been getting much of investors’ attention. If gold stays flat for a year, and Bitcoin twinkles to get all of the attention, speculators eventually drift away from gold. That sets up a great opportunity for gold to start getting more attention, and more money thrown its way.

As with most market cycles, gold’s 8-year cycle is measured bottom-to-bottom. But there is more to it than just that 8-year period between major bottoms. It typically sees a 3-year upward phase, which is where most of the big gains are seen. Then the 5-year downward phase actually has a 3-wave process of going down.

This has been evident since shortly after gold started trading freely in 1975. The cycle was probably lurking out in the wild, but it was just not evident with the Treasury department fixing gold prices prior to the 1970s. The 3-up, 5-down pattern saw one anomaly in the 2000s, when prices were mostly up all the time during that cycle. But if you look hard enough, you can see the inflection points of the 3-wave down move within that upward trend.

Now that we are in the 2010s, the pattern appears to have returned to its normal 3-year up, 5-year down phase, and reset for the next 3-year up phase. So why has gold not started screaming higher already?

My answer is that there is another independent cycle also at work that has kept gold price down in late 2017, and that is the 13-1/2 month cycle.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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