Subscriber question: Is Spring Here?

You ask, “Is spring here?” By your question you have acknowledged that the Long Wave is an economic cycle. Many people accept the notion of economic and financial cycles without really understanding what that means. The fundamental meaning of cycles is they are natural occurrences, like the tides, moon phases, annual seasons, and our own lifetime. In fact, everything in the universe is governed by cycles. As soon as we acknowledge the existence of economic and financial cycles we must accept that they, like all other cycles, are natural events, moving through a predictable sequence.

Unlike all other cycles, financial and economic cycles are governed by the unique motivator of money. This is a human concept, although it too is driven by cycles. Humans, principally those in control of the fabrication of money, such as central bankers, can use their money power to interfere with the natural course of economic and financial cycles. That money power can never effectively change the behavioral pattern of the cycle. If this money power has been abused in an effort to curtail natural, unpleasant cyclical events, such as the long wave winter or the winter stock bear market, as soon as the cycle reverts to normal these unpleasant cyclical events will have been made infinitely worse than they might have been, had they been allowed to follow their natural courses.

This money power has been abused to such an extent that essentially all financial cycles have been subverted, so the long wave economic winter has been delayed by 14 years.

The principal purpose of a long wave winter is to cleanse the economy of its debt. Obviously, that has not happened. In fact, central banks are fighting to hold back the long wave winter by actually increasing the debt. Accordingly, until debt is all but eradicated, as it was in the U.S. by 1949, the long wave spring cannot begin.