Are we in for a kondratieff winter? (starting this sumer)

Are we in for a kondratieff winter?

Could our next kondratieff summer be green, with green energy?

I am not an over-paid economist but think I have common sense and intuition.

I have a feeling we're heading towards a turning point.


Starting with greed in housing markets, this reminds me of the Dutch tulip rush: The Dutch Tulip manias



Also reminds me of the California gold rush (1848 -1850)



Most people came from all over the world after 1949, after the gold rush had finished.




We know the last housing bubble corrected itself between 1985 and 1996 (11 year correction)

Click on image below to enlarge

....just look where the current cycle is right now: up above on the right


And what about the huge wave of introductory low ARM mortgages reseting this year? I got lots of info from Patrick.net by the way

I found this image in June 2007: (2008 is projected worse than 2007)

http://www.beearly.com/charts/mortgage-resets1262007.png


And what about oil production that drives everything right now (allowing for these tulips to grow).

The crude oil discovery chart below, shows we peeked finding oil before 1970:

Source image: http://www.clv101.plus.com/vt/discovery.gif


I see a similar wave pattern in this oil discovery chart to the 'ARM reset' wave chart above.


And demand today is going up uP UP !



It seems demand has increased beyond max output since June mid 2007:



Maybe this explains the steap $ per barrel increase this year, we reached the golden $100

If everything is about 'supply and demand' where cost goes up when demand is high



and crude oil demand is going up everywhere....





and we are going to get less of it...



including other non renewable energy sources....




With most of the oil now found in dangerous parts of the world:




and population growth expanding by billions.... (The J curve)







I think to myself... Houston, we have a problem:

I am certainly not sharing the population increase images because I think more billions should not be born, but I do think we should acknowledge QUICKLY how we think about our situation and DO something!

and NOW!

I pledge for Wind, Solar, clean electricity, efficiency, sustainability.

Today's stocks have already crossed the top line in this chart below. The last time they crossed this high was 1929, then almost as high in 1966 mini crash, then the 1987 black Monday crash which looks tiny, then the 2000 dot-com-bubble crash that also looks small now, we are still not in a great place according to history:



Has anyone heard of the kondratieff winter?
Long term stock markets suggest we are reaching a 'delayed' winter.

Here is an image to sum up a long interesting article I read about kondratieff:





I see the chart more like this:



Until we find a sustainable way of life.....











Maybe walking or taking a bus is not such a bad idea after all!


Click on image to enlarge CARS BUS BYCICLES

The world consumes about this much refined oil per second of each day and night: (84 million barrels of oil each day)





The 52 US states use this much:



The energy situation has been measured in many different ways. I am just showing a few charts to show my perspective on things. I hear biodiesel has already peaked and ethanol is not going to help. It costs too much energy to grow a field of corn (which also feeds one person for a year) to create one tank of gas. Nuclear energy for more electricity will cost energy to mine the uranium, as well as dispose of the waste. Building more nuclear power stations will not be a quick process, as it is politicized. I can see why, as a nuclear accident can effect generations of people. So far nuclear energy amounts to just a third of North America's total energy use, and even less for the world.

If I had money, I would buy energy stocks and they would be Green as the leaf on a tulip!




Please send me your comments, as I may post them in my next blog! Thanks!

Very close to a bank melt down last week

My March prediction of a bank melt down seems to have come very close last week.

Here is one article I found from a well established and conservative British newspaper covering what happened:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/03/23/ccfed123.xml

"There was the risk of a total meltdown at the beginning of last week. I don't think most people have any idea how bad this chain could have been, and I am still not sure the Fed can maintain the solvency of the US banking system."


I am amazed!

If just one US high street banks was to run into a problem with liquidity, how long would it take for American customers to start another "run on the bank"? I would not be surprised at all at this stage. After all, this has already happened on more than one occasion in past history:

1634-1637 - The Dutch Tulip manias
1717-1719 - The British South Sea Bubble
1717-1720 - The French Mississippi Company
1815-1830 -The Post Napoleonic Depression
1929-1939- The Great Depression

Interesting to read back on past a blog

March 18 2008: Well, I read my blog from last December and it seems a setup for a bank crisis is really unfolding and 1929 style chaos could be just around the corner, oh boy...

In December 2007, I wrote:

My concern now is that we are going to see panic in March 2008.
Last week I was at a stop light and I noticed a car had broken down. Some people in the broken down car got out and started to push it away. But from three cars behind, some people who did not notice the breakdown started to get very angry. They made noise with their hooter, siren, horn (what ever you want to call it) saying "what the F#*k is going on"

Seeing this behavior for something trivial really make me wonder, what will we see once everyone lives in anxiety, following a collapse of banking plus a spike in the price of oil???

Here are some articles to show where we are today and why I think the big wave of crisis that will affect nearly everyone is going to be very soon, oh heck, I hope we all survive this mess: (credit for article links goes to Patrick.net)

How This Crisis Is Different (washingtonpost.com)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/17/AR2008031702150.html?referrer=emailarticle&ref=patrick.net

It's said that we're in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Maybe. But remember the S&L crisis of the mid-1980s? Or the commercial banking crisis of the late 1980s (from 1988 to 1992, 905 banks failed). Or the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, which sent South Korea, Indonesia and other countries on a boom-bust rollercoaster? All were frightening. What distinguishes this crisis -- which brought down Bear Sterns over the weekend -- is that it involves the entire financial system, not just depository institutions, and it's more mystifying than any of its predecessors.

Previous financial crises so weakened the banks and savings and loans that they lost their primacy. As recently as 1980, they supplied almost half of all lending -- to companies, consumers and home buyers. Now their share is less than 30 percent. The gap has been filled by "securitization": the bundling of mortgages, credit card debt and other loans into bond-like instruments that are sold to all manner of investors (banks themselves, pension funds, hedge funds, insurance companies).
.....Financial institutions (banks, investment banks, hedge funds and others) are interconnected through networks of buying, selling, borrowing and lending. These require confidence that commitments made will be commitments honored. If confidence collapses, the processes of extending credit for the economy and of trading -- for stocks, bonds, foreign exchange -- may also collapse.

Sub-prime collapse 'beyond the US Federal Reserve'
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23393912-462,00.html?ref=patrick.net

The crunch bites deeper in the US (news.bbc.co.uk)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7302140.stm?ref=patrick.net

Can't Grasp Credit Crisis? Join the Club (nytimes.com)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/business/19leonhardt.html?ref=patrick.net

Can't Grasp Credit Crisis? Join the Club (nytimes.com)
http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=4954.3219.0.0&ref=patrick.net

Bernanke's dollar sinks worldwide (news.yahoo.com)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080313/ap_on_bi_ge/diving_dollar?ref=patrick.net

Greenspanspeak (solari.com)
http://www.solari.com/blog/?p=703&ref=patrick.net