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COMMENT: Marty, I think the storms are creating dangerous rip currents that just suck swimmers out to sea here in Jersey. Never hear about that in Florida. I guess that and taxes are what made you leave. LOL

REPLY: Actually, I was caught in one when I was a teenager. My uncle was perhaps 15 feet from me and the harder I swarm I was just standing still. Suddenly, the current shifted and I could move forward. It was not a great feeling and it was inv visible. There was a sand bar I was trying to walk to and was caught in a riptide between shore and that sand bar.

It was a valuable lesson in life. Sometimes we walk straight into the invisible which becomes life-threatening. Kind of like current events. I have been in the middle of this crowd, but I never expect that they would actually get this going in their personal direction so swiftly. It is one thing to forecast what the model says like the commodity boom post-2020 and the move toward authoritarianism. But to live through it is another thing altogether. It is fascinating to me to see it all laid out years in advance and then it unfolds according to plan. It is like that hidden riptide but in the world economy.

Economic Evolution Turns Many Comparisons Obsolete

June 21, 2021

Economic Evolution Turns Many Comparisons Obsolete

The financial system has entered uncharted waters and it would be wise to take nothing for granted. To assume the economy will move forward without a glitch in such an environment is extremely optimistic. With time, things change and evolve, this transformation can be seen in both society and the economy. We are constantly bombarded with charts showing where things are going based on historical references but a question we must ask is just how relevant today’s comparisons are with prior economic cycles?Over the decades we have moved from an agricultural-based society to an industrial-centered economy where manufacturing and services have become the dominant way of making a living. Now, we are rapidly moving in the direction of technology becoming the main driver of the economy and it is creating a huge cultural change. The economy is again undergoing a metamorphosis. Over time, we tend to forget or minimize in our minds that throughout history the growing pains flowing from such a change tend to batter society from every direction. These transformations also create a great deal of noise making it difficult to understand what is happening.

Please consider the possibility the important adjustments the economy must make are lagging far behind our current “financial culture” or that the economy has evolved in a way that simply no longer works. Much of this has yet to become apparent to the masses and is masked by institutions papering over problems. A tradition of optimism has served mankind well, however, it has become clear something seems to be broken or out of kilter. It does not help that things like stock buybacks and outright fraud are creating a situation that could at any minute spin out of control. Making matters worse is that the general population is oblivious to this, and conditioned to accept whatever they are told. To many people, this is the new normal.

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

Weekly Commentary: Generational Turning Point

May 11, 2021

Weekly Commentary: Generational Turning Point

There is an overarching issue I haven’t been able to get off my mind: Are we at the beginning of something new or in the waning days of the previous multi-decade cycle?

May 5 – Wall Street Journal (James Mackintosh): “We could be at a generational turning point for finance. Politics, economics, international relations, demography and labor are all shifting to supporting inflation. After more than 40 years of policies that gave priority to the fight against rising prices, investor- and consumer-friendly solutions are becoming less fashionable, not only in the U.S. but in much of the world. Investors are woefully unprepared for such a shift, perhaps because such historic turning points have proven remarkably hard to spot. This may be another false alarm, and it will take many years to play out, but the evidence for a general shift is strong across five fronts.”

The “five fronts” underscored in Mr. Mackintosh’s insightful piece are as follows: 1) “Central banks, led by the Federal Reserve, are now less concerned about inflation.” 2) “Politics has shifted to spend even more now, pay even less later.” 3) “Globalization is out of fashion.” 4) “Demographics worsen the situation.” 5) “Empowered labor puts upward pressure on wages and prices.”

The analysis is well-founded, as is the article’s headline: “Everything Screams Inflation.” After surging another 3.7% this week (lumber up 12%, copper 6%, corn 9%), the Bloomberg Commodities Index has already gained 20% this year. Lumber enjoys a y-t-d gain of 93% – WTI Crude 34%, Gasoline 51%, Copper 35%, Aluminum 26%, Steel Rebar 32%, Corn 51%, Soybeans 22%, Wheat 19%, Coffee 18%, Sugar 13%, Cotton 15%, Lean Hogs 59%… The focus on inflation is clearly justified. Yet Mackintosh began his article suggesting a “Generational Turning Point for finance” – rather than inflation. Let’s explore…

I mark the mid-eighties as the beginning of the current super-cycle. A major collapse in market yields (following the reversal of Paul Volcker’s tightening cycle) promoted financial innovation and the expansion of non-bank Credit expansion.

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

What is 2032?

March 30, 2021

What is 2032?

Many people have asked, “Why is 2032 going to be such a major change in the world’s political economy and society as a whole?”

We are confronted by the end of the Sixth Wave come 2032, which will be a profound economic and political change. It appears these world leaders are pushing us toward fulfilling the vision of Kalus Schwab and his distorted view of how society functions. While the first wave marked the collapse of Rome, 794 marked the collapse of the Nara period in Japan as the capital then moved to Kyoto. That would last until 1185 AD when government was overthrown, marking the birth of the Shogun Period (military general authority). The Great Seljuk Turkish Empire had its origins, with its first capital in 1037. By 1092, the Seljuk Empire was at its greatest upon Malik Shah I’s death and had captured most of the Byzantine Empire, creating the Great Monetary Crisis of 1092 in Constantinople. Alexius I (1081-1118AD) of Byzantium saw his empire carved up.

It was 1075 when the Investiture Dispute began, where the Pope opposed kings appointing bishops to control. He had to threaten the ex-communication of kings, which only concluded in 1103. This was the start of the separation of church and state. In 1084, Emperor Henry IV deposed Pope Gregory VII and installed the first Anti-Pope Clement III who then crowned Henry Holy Roman Emperor. A revolution in 1094 resulted in Pope Urban II overthrowing the Anti-Pope and Henry lost power over Italy. But by 1111, Henry V captured the Pope, forced his settlement, and then crowned Henry V as Holy Roman Emperor. By 1112, the Church splits between Papal and Imperial supporters.

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

collapse, 2032, historical cycles, cycles, history, armstrong economics, martin armstrong,

Clarifying Wind Turbines

February 22, 2021

Clarifying Wind Turbines

It is possible to include heating elements in wind turbines to prevent freezing. They never took that into consideration in Texas where the wind turbines probably supply as much as 10% of the power. The same problem took place in Germany. Nobody seems to have done their research into historic weather patterns.

I have said many times that in school, I was confronted with a real conflict between Physics class and Economics. The first said nothing is random and the latter said everything was so the government can manipulate the economy i.e. Marxism.

The Father of Chaos Theory is Edward Norton Lorenz (1917–2008) who was an American mathematician and meteorologist. Lorenz was certainly THE pioneer in Chaos Theory. A professor at MIT, Lorenz was the first to recognize what is now called chaotic behavior in the mathematical modeling of weather systems.

During the 1950s, Lorenz observed that there was a cyclical non-linear nature to weather yet the field relied upon linear statistical models in meteorology to do weather forecasting. It was like trying to measure the circumference of a circle with a straight edge ruler. His work on the topic culminated in the publication of his 1963 paper Deterministic Non-periodic Flow in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, and with it, the foundation of chaos theory. During the early 1960s, Lorenz had access to early computers. He was running what he thought would be random numbers and began to observe there was a duality of a hidden repetitive nature. He graphed the numbers that were derived from his study of convection rolls in the atmosphere. What emerged has been perhaps one of the most important discoveries in modern time.

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

K-Wave – Real or Not?

January 22, 2021

K-Wave – Real or Not?

QUESTION: What is your opinion on Kondratieff Waves?

ANSWER: All those investigating cycles within the economy made a simple mistake. Kondratieff followed agriculture/commodity prices when agriculture accounted for 70% of the GDP pre-19th century. That only began to decline from 1850 forward, dropping to 40% by 1900 as the Industrial Revolution emerged with the invention of the steam engine. Moreover, aside from climate impacting the food supply, there were also wars. So the Kondratieff Wave failed to take into account all of the external forces.

If we extend the K-Wave 54 years from the commodity high in 1919, that brings us to 1973 which was close to the end of Bretton Woods in 1971, and the OPEC Oil crisis. Another 54 years from there will bring us to 2027. Therefore, this may be based entirely on commodities, but they were impacted by weather and war. Note 2027 is the ideal target on our model for war derived from entirely different sources.

There is a cycle of industrialization as well. Rome began as an agrarian society and moved toward trade, which brought them into conflict with Carthage. Rome itself became more like New York and grain was imported from Egypt. As agriculture became more of an import, Rome blossomed like New York into the arts and culture. The shift toward industrialization also resulted in a decline in birth rates for children. Large families were needed in an agrarian society but not so much in a developed society – hence the family laws of Augustus.

The first known Clean Air Act occurred in 535 AD by Emperor Justinian in Constantinople. He proclaimed the importance of clean air as a birthright. “By the law of nature these things are common to mankind—the air, running water, the sea.” Even Cicero wrote about pollution in the ancient city of Rome. This went hand and hand with developed societies and urbanization.

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

Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum

December 12, 2020

Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum

The idea that debt, leverage, speculation, greed, exploitation and parasitic elites can expand exponentially forever is magical thinking.

Contrary to first impressions, I am not a doom-and-gloomer; I’m a systems-cycles-er, meaning I’m interested in where systems and cycles are heading.

Cycles work because we’re still running Wetware 1.0 which entered beta testing around 200,000 years ago and was released, bugs and all, around 50,000 years ago. Since the processes and inputs haven’t changed, neither do the outputs.

Nature is a mix of dynamic, semi-chaotic systems (fractals, etc.) and cyclical patterns which tend to operate within predictable parameters. Why should human nature and human constructs (societies, economies and political realms) be any different?

So longterm success breeds complacency, hubris, economic and intellectual sclerosis, draining political infighting and the overproduction of parasitic elites, to use Peter Turchin’s apt description. Consumption of resources expands to soak up every last bit of what’s available and then the supply of goodies plummets for a multitude of completely natural and predictable reasons (sunspot/solar activity, El Nino, etc.) and a host of unpredictable but equally natural semi-chaotic extremes (100-year droughts, floods, etc.).

Wetware 1.0’s go-to solutions to all such difficulties are rather limited:

1. Ramp up magical thinking. If a couple of human sacrifices ensured good harvests in the good old days, let’s slaughter a couple hundred now–and if that doesn’t work, then…

2. Do more of what’s failed spectacularly and slaughter a couple thousand fellow humans, because darn it, maybe everything will turn around if we just kill another couple dozen.

This requires ignoring the novelty of the current challenges and clinging to what worked so well in the past even as whatever worked in the past can’t possibly work now because circumstances are fundamentally different.

3. Seek scapegoats. It’s those darn witches. Burn a bunch of them and our troubles will magically disappear.

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

This Was All Predicted 10 Years Ago

December 3, 2020

This Was All Predicted 10 Years Ago

In 2010, the scientific journal Nature published a collection of opinions looking ahead 10 years, i.e., where we are right now.

Nature then published a short response from zoologist Peter Turchin in its February 2010 issue.

Quantitative historical analysis reveals that complex human societies are affected by recurrent — and predictable — waves of political instability (P. Turchin and S. A. Nefedov Secular Cycles Princeton Univ. Press; 2009). In the United States, we have stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, and exploding public debt. These seemingly disparate social indicators are actually related to each other dynamically. They all experienced turning points during the 1970s. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability.

Very long “secular cycles” interact with shorter-term processes. In the United States, 50-year instability spikes occurred around 1870, 1920 and 1970, so another could be due around 2020.

We are also entering a dip in the so-called Kondratiev wave, which traces 40- to 60-year economic-growth cycles. This could mean that future recessions will be severe.

In addition, the next decade will see a rapid growth in the number of people in their 20s, like the youth bulge that accompanied the turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s.

All these cycles look set to peak in the years around 2020.

Again, that was from 2010. Right on schedule, we are experiencing the “instability spike” Turchin says tends to come along every 50 years.

Why 50 years? It relates to the human lifespan.

Consider who was “in charge” during the period around 1970. Baby Boomers were all 25 or younger at the time. Managing the chaos fell on older generations, who remembered it well and spent the rest of their lives trying to prevent more of it.

But after 50 years or so, they are mostly gone. We who remain must learn the lesson again.

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

Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?

October 10, 2020

Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?

We are woefully unprepared for a long run of bad luck.

Long-term cycles escape our notice because they play out over many years or even decades; few noticed the decreasing rainfall in the Mediterranean region in 150 A.D. but this gradual decline in rainfall slowly but surely reduced the grain harvests of the Roman Empire, which coupled with rising populations resulted in a reduced caloric intake for many people.

This weakened their immune systems in subtle ways, leaving them more vulnerable to the Antonine Plague of 165 AD.

The decline of temperatures in Northern Europe in the early 1300s led to “years without summer” and failed grain harvests which reduced the caloric intake of most people, leaving them weakened and more vulnerable to the Black Plague which swept Europe in 1347.

I’ve mentioned the book The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire a number of times as a source for understanding the impact of natural cycles on human civilization.

It’s important to note that the natural cycles and pandemics of 200 AD didn’t just cripple the Roman Empire; this same era saw the collapse of the mighty Parthian Empire of Persia, the kingdoms of India and the Han Dynasty in China.

In addition to natural cycles, there are human socio-economic cycles of debt and decay of civic values and the social contract: a proliferation of parasitic elites, a weakening of state finances and a decline in the purchasing power of wages/labor.

The rising dependence on debt and its eventual collapse is a cycle noted by Kondratieff and others, and Peter Turchin listed these three dynamics as the key drivers of decisive discord of the kind that brings down empires and nations.

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

Institutional Demand Will Drive Gold Ever Higher

September 18, 2020

INSTITUTIONAL DEMAND WILL DRIVE GOLD EVER HIGHER

Embrace uncertainty has long been one of my personal mottos. Because from this moment on, everything is uncertain whether it is your personal health, the stock market or the economy. Sure, we work with probabilities and the most likely is that the sun will rise tomorrow again and that I won’t die today. But we are now at a point in history when trend extrapolation is going to be not only precarious but also both foolish and impossible.

END OF A MAJOR CYCLE

That we are at the end of a major economic and social cycle is totally clear in my mind. But cycles don’t end overnight, if the world isn’t hit by a massive meteorite or nuclear bomb. Whether we are at the end of a 300 year cycle or a 2,000 year cycle, only future historians can tell the world. What is clear, at least to me, is that the end of this cycle started in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window. Since then global debt has gone up exponentially and now we are in the very final stage of the cycle. This end of the end, that we are now in, was first evidenced by gold turning up at the beginning of this century.

This significant trend change in gold that started 20 years ago was a clear indicator that we are now seeing the end of the fiat money system. Even though manipulated through a corrupt paper market, gold still reveals the deceitful actions of governments and central banks. There is no better evidence than the fall of fiat in this century.

CENTRAL BANKS ARE PANICKING

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

Why a Great Reset Based on Green Energy Isn’t Possible

July 17, 2020

Why a Great Reset Based on Green Energy Isn’t Possible

It seems like a reset of an economy should work like a reset of your computer: Turn it off and turn it back on again; most problems should be fixed. However, it doesn’t really work that way. Let’s look at a few of the misunderstandings that lead people to believe that the world economy can move to a Green Energy future.

[1] The economy isn’t really like a computer that can be switched on and off; it is more comparable to a human body that is dead, once it is switched off.

A computer is something that is made by humans. There is a beginning and an end to the process of making it. The computer works because energy in the form of electrical current flows through it. We can turn the electricity off and back on again. Somehow, almost like magic, software issues are resolved, and the system works better after the reset than before.

Even though the economy looks like something made by humans, it really is extremely different. In physics terms, it is a “dissipative structure.” It is able to “grow” only because of energy consumption, such as oil to power trucks and electricity to power machines.

The system is self-organizing in the sense that new businesses are formed based on the resources available and the apparent market for products made using these resources. Old businesses disappear when their products are no longer needed. Customers make decisions regarding what to buy based on their incomes, the amount of debt available to them, and the choice of goods available in the marketplace.

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

Our Fate Is Sealed, Vaccines Won’t Matter: Four Long Cycles Align

May 19, 2020

Our Fate Is Sealed, Vaccines Won’t Matter: Four Long Cycles Align

A Covid-19 vaccine, or lack thereof, will have zero effect in terms of reversing these cycles. Call it Fate, call it karma, call it what you will, but the cycles have aligned and nothing can stop the unraveling of all that was foolishly presumed to be permanent.

We like to think we’re in charge and that technology conquers all, but history moves in cycles that are larger than any person, corporation, elite or (gasp) technology. My first version of the chart below was drawn in 2008, when the Global Financial Meltdown revealed the cracks in the happy-story facade of permanent wonderfulness based on the amazing magic of borrowing / printing ever greater sums of currency, a.k.a. “money.”

Longtime correspondent Cheryl A. suggested I revisit the alignment of long-wave cycles, and so let’s start by what the study of cycles is not: it is predictive in terms of trends and turning points, not precise time or amplitude targets. In effect, the study of cycles is the study of human nature as it plays out in long-term social, political and economic dynamics.

Sir John Glubb’s succinct and deeply informed 1978 essay The Fate of Empires lists these stages of social development and decay that manifest as the rise and decline of empires:

The Age of Pioneers (outburst or Boost Phase)

The Age of Conquests

The Age of Commerce

The Age of Affluence

The Age of Intellect

The Age of Decadence

The slippery slope to collapse–decadence–is characterized by greed, corruption, irreconcilable internal political rifts, moral decay, frivolity, materialism–hmm, sound familiar?

The global status quo sped through The Age of Intellect (postmodernism) with little to show for the vast expenditure of resources, and is now firmly in the final terminal stage of decadence and collapse.

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

Peter Turchin And The Coming Crisis Of The 2020s

November 20, 2019

Peter Turchin And The Coming Crisis Of The 2020s

Increasingly, social science is dominated by Leftist ideologues who use the remaining respect that academia still has among the public to inculcate students and public alike with their equalitarian dogmas. But there are honorable exceptions. One of these: Peter Turchin, a Russian who is professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut. Turchin, who did PhD at Duke University, applies his “hard science” training to the Woke world of social science, aiming to make clear and testable predictions about the cycles through which civilizations go. According to Turchin, the West is headed for trouble in the 2020s.

Turchin, who keeps a blog about civilization cycles, recently presented his latest findings to the Centre for Complex Systems Studies in Utrecht, Holland, under the heading “A History of the Near Future: What History Tells Us About the Near Future.” [PDF]His conclusions are startling. Based on his detailed number-crunching about events, civilizations that are in decline—as is the USA is—always enter periods of extreme polarization. For the USA, the 2020s will be that period. It will be marred by years of political violence, and intense conflict. Worryingly, Turchin claims that the U.S. more polarized that it was on the eve of the Civil War [ See his Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History].

Turchin argued in his Utrecht presentation that political instability in the USA and Western Europe in the 2020s will be of unparalleled severity, to the extent that it may well “undermine scientific progress.”

Turchin began his presentation by quoting himself from almost a decade ago already making this prediction, one which—in a world of Trump, Brexit and the rise of European “populism”—now seems extremely prescient.

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

Global Warming

October 19, 2019

GLOBAL WARNING

“Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” (Thus passes the glory of the world). This phrase was used at the papal coronations between the early 1400s and 1963. It was meant to indicate the transitory or ephemeral nature of life and cycles.

As we are now facing the end of a major economic, political and cultural cycle, the world is likely to experience a dramatic change which very few are prepared for. Interestingly, the peak of economic cycles often coincide with the peaks in climate cycles. At the height of the Roman Empire, which was when Christ was born, the climate in Rome was tropical. Then the earth got cooler until the Viking era which coincided with the dark ages.

THE PROBLEM IS “THE ECONOMY STUPID” AND NOT THE CLIMATE

Yes, of course global warming has taken place recently as the effect of climate cycles. But the cycle has just peaked again which means that all the global warming activists will gradually cool down with the falling temperatures in the next few decades. The sun and the planets determine climate cycles and temperatures, like they have for many millions of years, and not human beings.

The climate activists are spending their efforts on the wrong issue. The big disaster looming for the world is not climate change but “the economy stupid” (phrase coined by Clinton).

So let’s instead look at the real coming disaster that the world needs to focus on and a number of facts that are self-evident even though very few are aware of them.

Instead of worrying about global warming, which we humans cannot effect, we should instead issue a GLOBAL WARNING about the coming economic cataclysm so that the world can be prepared for the extremely serious problems that will hit us all in the next few years.

Below I outline a potential scenario for the next 5-10 years:

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

Why People Fail to Understand There are Cycles to Everything

October 1, 2019

Why People Fail to Understand There are Cycles to Everything

There tends to be a fairly regular 21-year cycle in extreme climate shifts with respect to volatility. There was the extreme cold of 1936, followed 21 years later with a heatwave that melted the ice in the arctic, and then going into 1978 they were talking again about the deep freeze.

Indeed, TIME magazine’s January 31, 1977, featured the cover story, “The Big Freeze.” They reported that scientists were predicting that Earth’s average temperature could drop by 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Their cited cause was, of course, that humans created global cooling. Then suddenly the climate cycles shifted and it began to warm up.

I find it astonishing how people just do not understand that cycles even exit. They think only in a linear fashion that every day is supposed to be the same and if it isn’t, OMG, somebody is to blame.

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