You may have heard the song “Time” from the band Pink Floyd and their album The Dark Side of the Moon many years ago. The lyrics read in part, “So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking, racing around to come up behind you again.”
Our life—birth, living and death —is a straight line. The movement of the sun is a round cycle. Because of that contradiction, it is sometimes difficult to accept the idea of cycles except for those that are impossible to ignore. And yet, when humans could not figure out the cycles, such as for solar and lunar eclipses, we felt that the universe was random or failing.
So it comes down to: when we understand the cycles, all is good; when we do not, probably there is not a cycle. Sort of. If we do not recognize that a cycle exists, then we think we can do something about an event. If there is not a cycle to eclipses, then all we have to do is sacrifice a few virgins and we can control the occurrence of future eclipses.
If wars are not cyclical, then the solution is to get the right politicians in charge. If there is not a boom-bust cycle to economies, then all we need to do is get the “right” government economic policy to stop recessions and depressions. If we do not accept that climate may be cyclical, how do we explain great regional temperature changes higher and lower through recorded history?
Neither the late William Strauss nor his literary colleague Neil Howe was a historian in the classic sense. They might better be described as “observers of history”. Their two books—Generations in 1991 and The Fourth Turning in 1997—theorize a “generational cycle” that attempts to explain the changes in national “mood” and actions. Each generation evolves through four periods of 20 years—roughly long life expectancy—of childhood, young adult, midlife and elderly. Each generation experiences “four turnings”—high, awakening, unraveling and crisis.
Further, society goes through this same “turning” of high, awakening, unraveling and crises. For example, the “Baby Boomer [born 1946-1960] Generation” grew up during a post-war “high” in the US of “Superpower America”. The assassination of John Kennedy in 1963 was a turning point of “awakening” for them. “Unraveling” began in the mid-1980s when traditional values were under intense debate. The US experienced several economic recessions and perhaps culminated with the 2001 terrorist attack in New York City.
Michael Hart at Stock Board Asset wrote, “In the Fourth Turning [of the crisis period], a destabilizing event leads to the destruction and reconstruction of institutions of power. This fourth stage can be seen as the inverse of the awakening stage, and the authors cite World War II as the defining event of the most recent period of crisis”.
Out of 185 nations, 130 have an annual economic growth lower than population growth. Of the 58 that have reported first quarter 2017 numbers, 40 are running at 1 percent or less. Brazil impeached its president Dilma Rousseff; her replacement now faces impeachment. South Koreans just elected Moon Jae-in who wants to move closer to China, and wants direct talks with North Korea.
The Baby Boomers crisis period began in 2008 with the global economic collapse. On a national level, Strauss and Howe have predicted that the crisis period would begin around 2005 and last until 2025. This fits with Martin Armstrong’s Economic Confidence Model that foresees peak political and economic disruption coming in 2020. Enjoy 2017. The fun will continue.
****
E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.