Pick your enemy
"No more wars, no more bloodshed, and no more threats."
Menachem Begin, broadcast to the Egyptian people, November 11, 1977
Few historians would deny that there are patterns to the progress and regress of markets, societies and civilizations, but when they try to forecast what the future may hold, most extrapolate from past trends. This works well when the trend is going your way. But trends do not last forever. It is our contention that we are on the cusp of a trend change of historic proportions as outlined in the writings of R.R. Prechter, the founder of Elliott Wave International.
In 1978 R.R. Prechter predicted the beginning of the "raging bull market of the 1980's." Nobody believed him even though he was named "Guru of the Decade" by the Financial News Network. In his 1995 book At the Crest of the Wave, Prechter predicted the end of the raging bull, but the market failed to cooperate, as the DJIA pushed through 4,000 for the first time and nearly tripled in five years. In 1978 he was four years early. His prediction for 1995 was five years ahead of its time.
Yet Prechter is still predicting a crash of historic proportions, with the DJIA to fall below 1,000 and likely to below 400 (it stands at 9,933 at the time of writing). The precedents for this are the deep depressions of the 1790s, the 1840s and the 1930s.
As Paul B. Farrell of CBS points out in his article entitled "A 100-year bear market?" of October 13, 2004, "the world has gone through a historic shift in the past five years. And while the credibility he [Prechter] earned in the '80s would be intact if he had simply not jumped the gun and used 2000 as the start date of the great bear rather than 1995, there is, nevertheless, a chilling sense that his world view is unfolding on a daily basis with terrorist killings, oil over $50 a barrel, America's huge $51 trillion debt and independent predictions of a global cultural war that will last decades, eventually escalating to a nuclear holocaust."
Evidence that this peak is of a greater degree and magnitude than anything experienced over the last 200 years has been provided by the property market. Pete Kendall of Elliott Wave International, who has studied the coincidence of real estate and stock market peaks going back 200 years, found that there tends to be a lag, typically about two years, between the two peaks. Once the stock market begins to fall, investors invariably rush into the assumed security provided by property only to be disappointed once the property bubble is pricked. Since the current lag has now extended to four years and has included a large number of economies, once it peaks the effects will be on a scale never before experienced.
Then there are the promises provided by the current crop of politicians. They are preparing their voters for the Liberal Imperialism of the New American World Century. To the perpetual mantra of a more prosperous future they have now added the promise that they are capable of protecting us from nightmares of their own creation and that we will recreate the Garden of Eden on Earth once they align the planets to a meaningful harmony and eradicate money laundering, drug trafficking, smoking, alcoholism, obesity and sexually transmitted diseases. But first they have to remove the perceived enemies of progress.
Throughout history all regular armies have recruited "irregulars" to do their dirty work and to draw a civilized veil over the actions of their sponsors. Ivan the First had to subdue the very Cossacks he once used to pacify the Muslim regions of Russia and today the U.S. is forced to subdue the Muslims they once used to pacify Russia. Osama bin Laden and his comrades were hailed as freedom fighters in the 1980's by the American government at a time when Dick Cheney considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist.
But the label of who is and isn't a terrorist is still fuzzy and always has been. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was a terrorist, and now he isn't. Jerry Adams of Ireland's Sinn Fein and Nelson Mandela of South Africa were terrorists and now they are statesmen.
At least three Israeli Prime Ministers were either self-avowed terrorists or could be legitimately accused of engaging in terrorist activities. And President Vladimir Putin continues to lead a dirty war in Chechnya that could be described as terrorist in the ferocity of its atrocities against civilians.
Yet one of the worst violations of civil liberties occurred in the USA after anarchist mail bombs started the Palmer Raids in 1920, a few years before The Great Depression.
Alexander Mitchell Palmer was the United States Attorney General under Woodrow Wilson. Palmer believed that Communism was "eating its way into the homes of the American workman," and that American Communists were responsible for most of the country's social problems. In 1919, with strong support from Congress and the public, Palmer and his assistant J. Edgar Hoover orchestrated a series of well-publicized raids against apparent radicals and leftists under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918.
Starting on November 7, 1919 Palmer's men smashed union offices and the headquarters of Communist and Socialist organizations without warrants, concentrating on foreigners. They arrested over 10,000 people. In January 1920 another 6,000 were arrested, mostly members of the anarcho-syndicalist union Industrial Workers of the World. During one of the raids, more than 4,000 Communists were rounded up in a single night. In a murder similar to the lynching of Germans during World War I, a group of young men in Centralia, Washington hung a 'radical' from a railway bridge. The coroner's report stated that the communist "jumped off with a rope around his neck and then shot himself full of holes." For most of 1919, the public seemed to side with Palmer.
Unfortunately for Palmer, his announcement that a Communist revolution was to take place on May 1, 1921 brought his demise. Following initial panic, the non-appearance of the revolution led to his downfall under criticism of his disregard for civil rights and accusations that the entire Red Scare was designed to secure him the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.
Today we have a scare that is not confined to just one country but within which the Skull and Bones Society of Yale, of which both Bush and Kerry are members, appears to have had a decisive influence. Cycles repeat.
Menachem Begin, broadcast to the Egyptian people, November 11, 1977
Few historians would deny that there are patterns to the progress and regress of markets, societies and civilizations, but when they try to forecast what the future may hold, most extrapolate from past trends. This works well when the trend is going your way. But trends do not last forever. It is our contention that we are on the cusp of a trend change of historic proportions as outlined in the writings of R.R. Prechter, the founder of Elliott Wave International.
In 1978 R.R. Prechter predicted the beginning of the "raging bull market of the 1980's." Nobody believed him even though he was named "Guru of the Decade" by the Financial News Network. In his 1995 book At the Crest of the Wave, Prechter predicted the end of the raging bull, but the market failed to cooperate, as the DJIA pushed through 4,000 for the first time and nearly tripled in five years. In 1978 he was four years early. His prediction for 1995 was five years ahead of its time.
Yet Prechter is still predicting a crash of historic proportions, with the DJIA to fall below 1,000 and likely to below 400 (it stands at 9,933 at the time of writing). The precedents for this are the deep depressions of the 1790s, the 1840s and the 1930s.
As Paul B. Farrell of CBS points out in his article entitled "A 100-year bear market?" of October 13, 2004, "the world has gone through a historic shift in the past five years. And while the credibility he [Prechter] earned in the '80s would be intact if he had simply not jumped the gun and used 2000 as the start date of the great bear rather than 1995, there is, nevertheless, a chilling sense that his world view is unfolding on a daily basis with terrorist killings, oil over $50 a barrel, America's huge $51 trillion debt and independent predictions of a global cultural war that will last decades, eventually escalating to a nuclear holocaust."
Evidence that this peak is of a greater degree and magnitude than anything experienced over the last 200 years has been provided by the property market. Pete Kendall of Elliott Wave International, who has studied the coincidence of real estate and stock market peaks going back 200 years, found that there tends to be a lag, typically about two years, between the two peaks. Once the stock market begins to fall, investors invariably rush into the assumed security provided by property only to be disappointed once the property bubble is pricked. Since the current lag has now extended to four years and has included a large number of economies, once it peaks the effects will be on a scale never before experienced.
Then there are the promises provided by the current crop of politicians. They are preparing their voters for the Liberal Imperialism of the New American World Century. To the perpetual mantra of a more prosperous future they have now added the promise that they are capable of protecting us from nightmares of their own creation and that we will recreate the Garden of Eden on Earth once they align the planets to a meaningful harmony and eradicate money laundering, drug trafficking, smoking, alcoholism, obesity and sexually transmitted diseases. But first they have to remove the perceived enemies of progress.
Throughout history all regular armies have recruited "irregulars" to do their dirty work and to draw a civilized veil over the actions of their sponsors. Ivan the First had to subdue the very Cossacks he once used to pacify the Muslim regions of Russia and today the U.S. is forced to subdue the Muslims they once used to pacify Russia. Osama bin Laden and his comrades were hailed as freedom fighters in the 1980's by the American government at a time when Dick Cheney considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist.
But the label of who is and isn't a terrorist is still fuzzy and always has been. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was a terrorist, and now he isn't. Jerry Adams of Ireland's Sinn Fein and Nelson Mandela of South Africa were terrorists and now they are statesmen.
At least three Israeli Prime Ministers were either self-avowed terrorists or could be legitimately accused of engaging in terrorist activities. And President Vladimir Putin continues to lead a dirty war in Chechnya that could be described as terrorist in the ferocity of its atrocities against civilians.
Yet one of the worst violations of civil liberties occurred in the USA after anarchist mail bombs started the Palmer Raids in 1920, a few years before The Great Depression.
Alexander Mitchell Palmer was the United States Attorney General under Woodrow Wilson. Palmer believed that Communism was "eating its way into the homes of the American workman," and that American Communists were responsible for most of the country's social problems. In 1919, with strong support from Congress and the public, Palmer and his assistant J. Edgar Hoover orchestrated a series of well-publicized raids against apparent radicals and leftists under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918.
Starting on November 7, 1919 Palmer's men smashed union offices and the headquarters of Communist and Socialist organizations without warrants, concentrating on foreigners. They arrested over 10,000 people. In January 1920 another 6,000 were arrested, mostly members of the anarcho-syndicalist union Industrial Workers of the World. During one of the raids, more than 4,000 Communists were rounded up in a single night. In a murder similar to the lynching of Germans during World War I, a group of young men in Centralia, Washington hung a 'radical' from a railway bridge. The coroner's report stated that the communist "jumped off with a rope around his neck and then shot himself full of holes." For most of 1919, the public seemed to side with Palmer.
Unfortunately for Palmer, his announcement that a Communist revolution was to take place on May 1, 1921 brought his demise. Following initial panic, the non-appearance of the revolution led to his downfall under criticism of his disregard for civil rights and accusations that the entire Red Scare was designed to secure him the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.
Today we have a scare that is not confined to just one country but within which the Skull and Bones Society of Yale, of which both Bush and Kerry are members, appears to have had a decisive influence. Cycles repeat.
