End Of Recessions? — Brian Romanchuk

I saw a high profile comment to the effect that the business cycle was abolished recently. Since I will be plugging a book on recessions shortly, that represents a risk to my business plans. I do not wish to go through what exactly was said elsewhere (mainly because I did not go through the details of the argument), but just give my spin on the idea. If we stick enough qualifications into how we express ourselves, it is not that controversial an opinion....

Bond Economics
End Of Recessions?
Brian Romanchuk

Klint Finley — Mathematicians Predict the Future With Data From the Past

In Isaac Asimov’s classic science fiction saga Foundation, mathematics professor Hari Seldon predicts the future using what he calls psychohistory. Drawing on mathematical models that describe what happened in the past, he anticipates what will happen next, including the fall of the Galactic Empire.

That may seem like fanciful stuff. But Peter Turchin is turning himself into a real-life Hari Seldon — and he’s not alone.
Turchin — a professor at the University of Connecticut — is the driving force behind a field called “cliodynamics,” where scientists and mathematicians analyze history in the hopes of finding patterns they can then use to predict the future. It’s named after Clio, the Greek muse of history.

These academics have the same goals as other historians — “We start with questions that historians have asked for all of history,” Turchin says. “For example: Why do civilizations collapse?” — but they seek to answer these questions quite differently. They use math rather than mere language, and according to Turchin, the prognosis isn’t that far removed from the empire-crushing predictions laid down by Hari Seldon in the Foundation saga. Unless something changes, he says, we’re due for a wave of widespread violence in about 2020, including riots and terrorism.

Wired
Mathematicians Predict the Future With Data From the Past
Klint Finley
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

Jim O’Reilly — Does a cycle exist which points to the 2020′s?

Jim O'Reilly joins Strauss &n Howe and Ravi Batra in projecting cycles of social change, with a turning point in the offing, although for different reasons.

Comments on Global Political Economy

Does a cycle exist which points to the 2020′s? Could be.
Jim O’Reilly

Steve Roth — Deep and Long: Private Debt and Financial Recessions

And it’s worth remembering who that devastation is visited upon: the middle class and the poor.The rich do just fine.

Recessions are nature’s (and neoclassicals’) way…of keeping the little guy down.

Aymptosis
Deep and Long: Private Debt and Financial Recessions
Steve Roth

Think of business and financial cycles in terms of the alternation of expansion and consolidation phases that chiefly benefit owners, with workers chiefly bearing the brunt of the consolidation — by design. Which is a reason I call neoclassicism and neoliberalism advocacy rather than economic science.

Bob Prechter — Get ready for the second leg down

Don't get too comfortable with the relatively flat markets of 2011, there's a big storm coming our way. This is the view of Robert Prechter, founder and president of Elliott Wave International. In the attached video Prechter compares the current phase of the market to the late stages of the 1929 - 1933 period in U.S. history; a time marked by extreme volatility eventually ending in tears.

Read it and watch video at Yahoo Finance
Market Is Reliving Late Stages of 1930′s Depression: Bob Prechter
by Jeff Macke

The meat is in the video.