What the cycles suggest

Here is what the various cycles I have examined indicate about the course of things in the future:

 

Politics: 
I did a net search for timelines on various organizations (civil rights, environmental, labor, Heritage Foundation etc) in order to build up a timeline of events.  I classified each event as either liberal or conservative and then calculated a running ratio of the trailing 15 year sum of conservative events divided by trailing 15 year sum of all events.  The resulting ratio shows cycles of "conservatism" that align fairly well with the stock cycle in the 20th century.  The correspondence between the stock and political cycles breaks down before 1900 (the reasons for this are too involved to go into here they are discussed extensively in my forthcoming book).   After WW I the political trends align well with Kondratiev seasons/secular market trends.

 

http://csf.colorado.edu/authors/Alexander.Mike/Lib-Cons.htm

 

The American historian Arthur Schlesinger identified a series of liberal-conservative political cycles back in the 1940's.  His cycles agree pretty well with the figure.  Schlesinger identified a liberal wave from 1901-1919 (the figure shows 1896-1916), a conservative wave from 1919 to 1931 (the figure shows 1916-1931) and a liberal wave from 1931 to 1947 (the figure shows 1931-1946).  Since Schlesinger's time we have seen a conservative wave from 1946 to 1963, a liberal wave to 1980 and a conservative wave since then. 

 

The Kondratiev/stock cycle-aligned political trends I show in this webpage seem to be the same cycles seen by Schlesinger.  The alignment with the stock cycle suggests that we should see a fall-off in conservatism in the near future.  Political scientists have a concept called critical elections that are usually dated 1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932, and 1968.  The last four are spaced 36 years apart suggesting the next one will be in 2004.  The combination of the political cycle and critical election concept suggests that the Bush administration would be replaced by a more liberal administration in 2004.

 

Religion:
According to the generational cycle of Strauss and Howe, enhanced religious activity occurs during the awakening periods, which in modern times are aligned with Kondratiev summer.  Kondratiev winter is aligned with the Strauss and Howe secular crisis turning.  Thus, rising levels of religious fervor is not expected based on cycles analysis.

 

Crime & Drug/Alcohol Use
In the 20th century rising trends in crime and alcohol/drug use have tended to be associated with awakenings (K-summer) and not crises (K-winter).  The current favorable trends in these behaviors should continue.

 

Cycles of War & Peace/Hegemony Cycle

From the mid 17th to the early 20th century a ~50 year cycle in great power wars which aligned with K-peaks has been identified by many workers.  Two of these 50 year cycles were combined into a larger 100-year cycles of hegemony by a number of workers (Toynbee for one).  These cycles have been formulated into the leadership cycle model of George Modelski and William Thompson.  This cycle is aligned with Strauss and Howe's generational cycle and hence with the K-cycle.  After WW I the K-cycle and generational cycle showed a new pattern of alignment (see below).  It appears that the leadership cycle shifted along with the other cycles and so we had WW II in the "wrong" place for the war cycle.  This new cycle has the US currently in the world-power phase of the leadership cycle instead of the deconcentration phase.  We should expect continued U.S. hegemony for the rest of this decade with regional challenges occurring over the two decade following 2010.  More details can be found here:

 

http://csf.colorado.edu/authors/Alexander.Mike/War-Cycle.htm

 

Correspondence between the generational cycle (saeculum) and the K-cycle

The centerpiece of my K-cycle studies is the idea that the periods that Strauss and Howe call turnings, which are associated with certain generational archetypes are simply the response of society to "Kondratiev stress", that is social stress produced by the K-cycle.  What Strauss and Howe call social moments (Awakenings and Crises) are times of rising Kondratiev stress.  The other turnings (Unravelings and Highs) are times of falling stress.

 

There have been two shifts in the relation between the K-cycle and the *social response* to the K-cycle that are the turnings.  Each shift bollixes up the relations for about 70 years until the new pattern settles out.  Up to 1650 the pattern is rising stress during upwaves that is consistent with a K-cycle model that has population as the cycle driver and is essentially Malthusian in nature.  From 1720 to the late 19th century the pattern is rising stress during downwaves.  The K-cycle model here uses debt (largely associated with war finance) as the principal cycle driver, although the old population driver continues to operate in the background.  For both models the K-cycle length is controlled by biological generation length (~27 years), two of which give rise to a the average K-cycle length of ~54 years.

 

Hence the 1650-1720 period saw a re-alignment and the relations are all bollixed up as we change from one alignment (stress=upwaves) to another (stress=downwaves).  There is an associated shrinkage in Strauss and Howe saeculum length as the two saecula from 1675 to 1860 corresponded to 3.5 K-cycles instead of four. Strauss and Howe did not note this change in Generations, although in The Fourth Turning they noted that turning length has become shorter in recent centuries, but advanced no explanation for why this should happen.

 

From the 1920's to now the pattern is different again.  Today's cycle follows Schumpter's model for post-industrial revolution economic growth where there are two boom/bust cycles per K-cycle.  The stressful periods are now the late upwave (called Kondratiev summer) and the late downwave (called Kondratiev winter).  These periods are associated with liberal trends in the political cycle and secular bear markets in stocks.  The other periods (Kondratiev spring and fall) are boom times, with stock bull markets and conservative politics.  We are just completing Kondratiev fall and entering winter.  Cycle length is now about 72 years, controlled by ~18 year "phase-of-life" generations as described by Strauss and Howe (but slightly shorter than their suggested 22 year length).  Support for the 18 year length would be a long-term stock market peak in 2000 (as discussed in Stock Cycles) rather than a peak in 2007-2010 as projected by Harry Dent.  A Bush defeat in landslide in 2004 would provide further confirmation.

 

So we have another period roughly over 1860-1930 during which the second re-alignment occurs.  Here the two saeculum from 1860 to 2000 are way shorter than before.  This shift in length is so great that Strauss and Howe do note it in Generations and call it the "Civil War anomaly".  The war cycle which worked beautifully up to WW I falls apart afterward with WW II occurring only 1/2 a K-cycle after WW I, instead of a full cycle.  This "world war anomaly" is a result of the bollixing up of the cycles caused by the second shift in cycle alignment.  It reflects the same shifts as Strauss and Howe's Civil War anomaly.  After WW II the all the cycles are now aligned again and we have a new shorter, 72 year saeculum.  The K-cycle and leadership cycle are also aligned with the 72 year saeculum.  This means we should look for the war cycle to deliver the next global war 72 years after WW I (when the old alignment ended) and sure enough, the Cold War ends in 1991, 73 years after the end of WW I.  The longer K-cycle means that we should only be entering K-winter around now, 72 years after 1929, which seems to be what we are doing...

 

whew, that's enough...

 

Mike Alexander,  author of
Stock Cycles: Why stocks won't beat money markets over the next 20 years.
http://www.net-link.net/~malexan/STOCK_CYCLES.htm