Month: July 2019

The beginning of the tulpenwoerde, or what the Victorians called the tulipomania, is associated with the arrival in the tulip market around 1634 of outsiders who were apparently attracted by stories of rising prices for tulip bulbs in Paris and northern France. Among these entrants to the market–later dismissed by Dutch florists as the “new amateurs”–were weavers, spinners, cobblers, bakers, grocers, and peasants.

Vega describes the obsessive-compulsive behavior of a speculator invoking his luck; he “wavers as to how best to secure a profit, chews his nails, pulls his fingers, closes his eyes, takes four paces and four times talks to himself, raises his hand to his cheek as if he has a toothache, puts on a thoughtful countenance, sticks out a finger, rubs his brow, and all this accompanied by a mysterious coughing as though he could force the hand of fortune.”

A member of the Exchange opens his hand and another takes it, and thus sells a number of shares at a fixed price, which is confirmed by the second handshake.

The line separating speculation from investment is so thin that it has been said both that speculation is the name give to a failed investment and that investment is the name given to a successful speculation.

It is, by dint of sheer will, they could force tiger lilies to bloom in the November Woods.

When a new Awakening later erupts, the Millennials will for the first time discover a generation that refuses to celebrate them: their own kids, freshly come of age.

Of all today’s generations, the Millennials probably have the most at stake in the coming Crisis. If it ends badly, they would bear the full burden of its consequence throughout their adult lives.

If the Crisis catalyst comes on schedule, around the year 2005, then the climax will be due around 2020, the resolution around 2026.

From this sudden realization could issue the end game of Boomer life-cycle consumption and savings habits: the Great Devaluation. At long last, aging Boomers will focus on the hard fact that a newly endangered America truly cannot (and younger generation will not) make their old-age subsidies a top public priority.

All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:

• Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
• Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities
• Cultural distress, with the media plunging into a dizzying decay, and a decency backlash in favor of state censorship
• Technological distress, with cryptoanarchy, high-tech oligarchy, and biogenetic chaos
• Ecological distress, with atmospheric damage, energy or water shortages, and new diseases
• Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
• Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction