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| Wm. Robert Johnston's reconstruction of the last Ice Age (at 16,000 BC) |
A fascinating article by Brian Bloom in The Market Oracle on 6 August. He ties together a number of threads:
- Regular periodic stockmarket cycles
- Richard Duncan's Olduvai Theory (we've passed the peak of the per capita energy use that built our civilisation)
- The possible role of sunspots in cycles of climate change (allegedly we're heading for a deep global freeze in 50 years' time)
- The sun's movement in relation to the Milky Way, tentatively linked to a 100,000-year glaciation cycle
... and relates them to economic and political issues to suggest that we need to take urgent action to reduce debt and become more energy-efficient.
In case you are tempted to dismiss frontier thinking of this kind, it's worth remembering that many highly successful investors are intrigued by long-wave patterns. For example, Marc Faber is interested in the Kondratieff cycle, among others:
...business cycles do exist. Some economists claim that they occur, according to Juglar, every eight to twelve years. But according to Kondratieff and Schumpeter, you have these long waves that occur. You have a rising wave of about 15 to 25 years, then there is a plateau and downward again for 15 to 25 years. And then you have a drop and the entire cycle starts again. You have all kinds of cycle theory. I am not so sure you can measure the timing of the peak and the bottom, but definitely cycles do exist.
(Interview with Jim Puplava on Financial Sense, February 22, 2003)
In case you are tempted to dismiss frontier thinking of this kind, it's worth remembering that many highly successful investors are intrigued by long-wave patterns. For example, Marc Faber is interested in the Kondratieff cycle, among others:
...business cycles do exist. Some economists claim that they occur, according to Juglar, every eight to twelve years. But according to Kondratieff and Schumpeter, you have these long waves that occur. You have a rising wave of about 15 to 25 years, then there is a plateau and downward again for 15 to 25 years. And then you have a drop and the entire cycle starts again. You have all kinds of cycle theory. I am not so sure you can measure the timing of the peak and the bottom, but definitely cycles do exist.
(Interview with Jim Puplava on Financial Sense, February 22, 2003)
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