Thrive – Newsletter for July

The Month’s Topic Links (articles and videos)

Corruption — a variety of articles on videos on corruption in society

Deflation — a video on deflation – the basics

Stock Market — the outlook for the U.S. Stock Market related to timing for the coming crash

Gold and the US Dollar — the outlook for gold and the U.S. Dollar (the deflation scenario)

Freeze Dried Food (Mountain House) — a video on Mountain House and their long-term food products

U.S. Presidential Cycles

In the history of the United States, there are have been three “populist” presidents and each one has been followed by a stock market crash and a depression.

• Andrew Jackson (term: 1829 – 1837) — Depression: Panic of 1837
• Herbert Hoover (term: 1929 – 1928) — Depression: Great Depression of 1929
• Donald Trump (term: 2016 – ? ) — Depression: TBA (probably 2021 ….   )

Populism refers to a range of stances that emphasize the idea of “the people” and often juxtapose this group against “the elite.” (Wikipedia)

This is certainly the case in the current political and social environment, where we have the 1% wealthy elite pitted against the rest of the constituents (the 99% that are considered middle class, or lower). They were all periods of class extremes.

In the chart above, you can see how Presidents are judged based upon the performance of the economy while they’re in power. I’ve marked a checkmark above all the U.S. Presidents that were judged in the top 50% of the 44 Presidents to date. The Presidents that were judged as failures receive an X (lower 50%).

The blue bars below the names denote Democrats, red is for Republican.

You can see that by and large, when the climate turns cold and dry, the economy goes into a tailspin. The leaders in these economic downturns suffer the consequences, becoming extremely unpopular. They usually don’t have that much impact on the economy, but in good times, they take credit for it, so they’ve, in a sense, “made their own beds.” They always get blamed for the downturn.

In the past twenty years, climate has been extreme (consistent with predictions and signalling a major climate turn from hot to cold), with a major drought forecast to accompany the cold. Donald Trump was elected as a populist president in 2016 in front of what is expected to be a major depression as early as 2021. I expect he will be vilified for the major crash that’s about to happen before the end of his term. These cycle tops always result in a trend towards socialism across the globe.

A Backgrounder on Major Cycles

We’re at the top of a 1030 cycle — after an historic economic expansion during a period of warm-wet climate. That’s a climate that “grows” empires. The current one is United States of America, the leader economically and militarily for a hundred years.

However, we’re at the end of the warm-wet cycle. It’s already turned drier, although we’ve had a three year period of flooding, which typically marks a major cycle top, just before it turns colder.

Much of the knowledge of climate cycles comes from Dr. Raymond H. Wheeler. You’ll find reference to his work all through my writing. But, there are other luminaries that discovered cycles. I’ll introduce you to some of them below.

Similar traits appear at specific stages of major cycles. Dr. Wheeler explains:

“Why should the major economic depressions of history be associated with excessive temperatures and drought? Why did the human birth rate and the animal birth rate decline during the excessively warm 1920’s and 1930’s? You will remember that the dictator nations tried their best to get the human birth rate back to normal again, but unsuccessfully, according to the testimony of their physicians. Why should all the known declines in human birth rate history have been associated not with wars, but with hot droughts? Why is it that conception declines with increase in temperature above a certain limit? The age of maturing girls in the southern part of the United States is on the average one year behind the corresponding age in the northern part.”

“Why should the great revivals in learning of good government, of genius, of economic and political aggressiveness, long rises in production, and the numerous other events of “Golden Ages” all come at the same time on the cycle along with increases in the birth rate in man and presumably in animals? Why, when decadence occurs, is it general and always associated with extreme temperatures? Why is stability of behavior associated with “optimum” temperatures and instability with excessive temperatures?”

Why indeed? But this has always been the case, throughout history.

Cycles That Impact Civilizations and the Economy

Now, let’s take a look at much larger cycles, spanning many decades, for example, 172 and 516 year cycles.

The data above comes from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration—from the Greenland Ice Core Research project ending in 1992. Ice cores are an extremely accurate method of determining temperature (blue line in the chart) back through the centuries. This data is undisputed by the scientific community, but has been suppressed by the UN-associated, man-made warming advocates. It also reinforces the findings of Dr. Raymond Wheeler in his research over fifty years earlier of tree ring data, weather records, military records, locust plagues, historical chronicles, sunspot records, etc.

The blue line that represents the major climate cycles, is a temperature indicator. Rainfall more or less follows the temperature pattern but creates its own fluctuating cycles in its own rhythm.

The red arrows on the diagram above mark large cycles of approximately 1050 years. The period from about 1256 BC to 54 BC had one extra 172 year cycle, so there can be fluctuations in overall cycle length, but they tend to be plus or minus one sub-cycle.

Major Cycles and Their Influence

Here are the major cycles, with a description of their impact from the work of Stephen J. Puetz in his seminal work, The Unified Cycle Theory. 

The major cycles are “harmonic”: Multiply by 3 to get the next higher cycle period.

1545 year cycle — This cycle is often referred to as the “Dansgaard-Oeschger” cycle by paleoclimatologists. It’s a cycle that has been reinforced by the Greenland ice core data — a climate cycle and major sunspot cycle. Peaks are considered golden ages, while troughs develop into “dark ages.” The most recent temperature low was in 1663 (a half-cycle low), while the next trough is predicted around 2436. The previous major full-cycle climate low was is 1891 (you can see this on the above chart). The lows of these cycles are characterized as “Dark Ages.”

1030 year cycle — The importance of this cycle (two 515 year cycles combined) is that it marks an East to West (and vice versa) power shift. Each successive empire develops on the opposite side of the planet. So, while the American Empire of the West crumbles, the East starts to rise in power. Expect the next big world dominating empire to be one of either India, Russia, or China. The next 500 year cycle top after that will be a western-based empire.

“There have been five 500-year epochs since the sixth century B.C. The first, third, and fifth belonged to Europe, as measured in terms of political initiative and aggressiveness. The second and fourth belonged to Asia. In the second epoch, Turkish peoples , Huns, and Tartars built one great empire after another, ending in Attila’s famous dominion. In the fourth the mongols ruled Asia under the Khans. The next epoch, the sixth, will belong to Asia in terms of initiative and aggressiveness. Signs of these forth-coming events are already obvious in the present behavior of the Asiatic peoples, including Russia.” — Dr. Raymond Wheeler

515 year cycle — This is referred to as the civilization cycle. New civilizations generally form 200 to 300 years before the theoretical peaks. Dominant civilizations at the peak tend to decline, the collapse, in the 100to 300 years following its peak. You’re currently watching the start of the decline of the American empire. Supporting evidence for this cycle spans more than 5000 years covering empires such as: ancient China, Meso-America, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Medieval Europe, and modern Anglo-Saxon nations.

172 year cycle — This cycle is both a climate cycle and an economic cycle, always resulting in an economic crash and depression (and ushers in a period of civil wars). The theoretical top was in the year 2007. While we started a major crash, it was upended in early 2009 by the injection of huge amounts of debt by central bankers. While they’ve been able to delay the deeper collapse, Mother Nature always wins in the end; we’re expecting the balance of this collapse and depression to once again tip the scales to the downside at the end of 2020 or early part of 2021. This cycle occurs at the 171.4 year conjunction of Neptune and Uranus. The past four cycle tops (and economic crashes) have triggered exactly 14 years after the conjunction itself.

57 year cycle — This cycle is known as the Kondratiev Wave, after the Russian scientist who made it famous, Nikolia Kondratiev. It’s also called the K-cycle, or “long cycle.” It subdivides into four parts and is associated with cycles in war, stock prices, credit markets, commodities, and economic depressions. Major depressions coincide with every third cycle (which is also the 172 year cycle). Lesser downturns often occur at the other two 57 year highs of the 172 year cycle. This is one of the most well-known cycles and is followed by many stock market analysts.

18.5 year cycle — This cycle is actually 18.3 years and contains a real estate cycle, exhaustively researched by Edward Dewey, even before he founded “The Foundation for the Study of Cycles” back in 1941. I sat on the board a few years ago as the Executive Director. The cycle has two parts, and is known to climatologists as the lunar nodal cycle, a period when the Moon is above the equator for half the cycle and then below it for the balance. It’s also a well-known rainfall cycle.

Smaller cycles: There are smaller cycles still. The seven year “feast or famine” cycle is extensively referenced in the Holy Bible, for example (it’s a rainfall cycle). There are shorter cycles of 3.5 years, 2.2 years …  right down to 28 days (the moon). Ask any hospital emergency nurse or policeman about the likelihood that the full moon cycle influences our psyche is real, or not.

Alexander Chizhevsky, a Russian scientist, wrote extensively about the “excitability factor” in humans, which exhibited itself with every solar cycle top of approximately 11.2 years. You’ll find Woodstock and the Destruction of the Twin Towers in New York at the very tops of these cycles.

100 year climate cycle — a climate cycle. This cycle is has been extensively researched and written about by Raymond H. Wheeler. 500 year cycles break down into sub-cycles of about 100 years each. They may vary between about 80 and 120 years, but since the top of the Roman cycle, they’ve been fairly consistent.

Cycle Traits

Cycles have their own inherent traits that manifest themselves at lows and highs. The larger the cycle, the more pronounced these traits tend to be. We’re now at the top of the 500 year cycle, so you’re currently seeing extremes, but these extremes are nothing new. You’ll find them at work in the 1500s, for example, when humans also experienced similar traits. There was an historic financial collapse, as feudalism collapsed and we moved into the modern financial system of debt-fueled private banking.

And, in terms of social traits, they’re always more or less the same:

“Observers down through history agreed that warm-climate peoples were more prone to fanaticism, cruelty, tyranny and dictators. These phenomena have concenuated, all down through history, from the days of the Greek tyrants to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, during the warm phase of the climatic cycle. It is during these times especially, when they are dry and therefore hotter yet, that minorities suffer their worst persecutions, liberties are curtailed, and fascism and communism develop. Hitler is a typical hot-drought specimen! Socialistic trends — any form of shift from individualism toward greater state control and ownership — are warm-phase phenomena and, when extreme, are symptoms of decadence.” — Dr. Raymond H. Wheeler, Ph.d.

Ring any bells in terms of the world we live in today?

Cycles of varying lengths and power influence every aspect of our lives on Earth. Never forget that we’re only a very small rock in a huge solar system (the Sun is 400 times larger than our tiny planet). We’re influenced every day by forces well beyond the nine revolving planets we count as our solar community.

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The 2007 Turn

The predicted 516 year cycle top was in 2007, and sure enough, the stock market topped and we went into the “Great Recession.” As a stock market technical analyst (and cycles expert), I, and many others, expected the market to drop much farther than it did in 2008. But, central banks got involved in that same year and injected trillions of dollars into the economy to keep the market up.

The problem is that they can’t stop a natural cycle; they can just delay it. In effect, they’re just shifting the top of the 500 year cycle one sub-cycle later. They also exacerbate the problem, as the eventual collapse becomes just that much larger. That’s where we are today. The stock market is still up, but barely; underlying economic conditions are rapidly deteriorating. The world  now is reportedly more than $255 trillion in debt.

Besides injecting money into the system, central banks have another tool — lowering interest rates. However, rates are already so low that central banks are, quite frankly, out of ammunition. There is, at this point, little they can do to avoid the inevitable. All they’ve really done is to make the debt larger, people poorer, and created a situation that will be far worse when it unravels than it would otherwise have been.

Where We Are Now

A bit of background …

Dr. Raymond Wheeler, PhD spent a good portion of his life (along with 200 employees) documenting the cycles of history going back to the year 600 B.C. Dr. Wheeler created the Drought Clock, which illustrated the periodicity (ie. – recurrent with regularity) of these recurring cycles in a manner that shows their predictability, verifiable through observation, and supported by data from a variety of independent sources.

My work, over the past ten years, has been in studying in detail the patterns of the larger worldwide cycles of 172 and 516 years (along with, to a lesser degree, shorter ones) as identified by Dr. Raymond H. Wheeler and Stephen Puetz. Dr. Wheeler identified the cycle lengths for climate of 25, 100, 170, and 500 years, while Stephen Puetz has done the work to prove their veracity, shifting the 170 cycle, for example, to a more accurate 172 years, and addressing the probability factor surrounding major harmonic cycles going back to the formation of the Earth.

There are many other luminaries from the turn of the twentieth century that wrote extensively about cycles and their recurrence. You can find books on the subject through my recommended reading list.

The Coming Depression

At the time I’m writing this article, I believe we about another year before things really start to fall apart. The stock market is in its latter stages of topping, but still has one more high to put in, likely in the first half of 2021. I predict it will take another five years from the top to reach the ultimate bottom. At the bottom, I expect the DOW to be under 3,000 points (its high was just under 28.000  earlier this year).

As a reference, the DOW dropped 90% during the onset of the Great Depression in 1929/30.

Every 1,000 years, we go into a period that has historically been called, “The Dark Ages.” Don’t let that label scare you. The most recent “dark ages” period, from the 1500s to the 1800s saw several smaller empires emerge — Spain, Portugal, and England. At the bottom of the this period, in the 1600s, the New World (America) was established. So, it’s not as if the world goes to sleep!

However, we’re moving into a period of pandemics, tougher climatic conditions, and civil wars. The good side of the experience of a colder/dryer climate is the furthering of democracy and freedom.

“As the warm-wet phase terminates, climate becomes drier and hotter. As it does, other phenomena manifest themselves: creativity declines; reaction and decadence set in; governments become despotic; minorities are persecuted; general health declines along with the birthrate; economic systems collapse; socialistic and communistic regimes rise under an epidemic of dictators; individual freedoms vanish; and the moral tone of society reaches a low level.

Towards the end of this period comes another series of wars we call nation-falling wars because many of the governments initiating them during this period are either tottering or about to collapse internally. These particularly savage conflicts occur on a falling temperature and rising rainfall curve.” — Dr. Raymond H. Wheeler

Current events show that another world revolution is occurring similar to

1. the emergence of rational thought in the 5th century BC,
2. the fall of Rome and other ancient civilizations in the 5th century (and the beginning of the medieval world based on feudalism), and
3. the final collapse of the Middle Ages in the 15th century.
4. The current convulsion is comparable to the birth of Christianity in the first century and to the birth of the modern nation as a feudal principality in the 9th and 10th centuries.

After the Crash

We’re going to experience a horrific stock market crash beginning most likely in the year 2021 (in the meantime, in late 2020, the market is going to rally to one more all time new high).

The final stock market crash will result in a complete financial meltdown and the formation of a new monetary system, because the current one is quite frankly, a ponzi scheme. It starts with our banking system. You can find out more about that here.

As a result, we’re going to have a very tough couple of decades going forward. I’m now turning my attention to what you can do to shield your current wealth, maintain your heath, stay safe in what promises to be a very volatile and violent period. I’ll be sharing much more in upcoming webinars and longer-length videos on this site, but in the meantime, here’s a quick guide to some of the things you need to think about, depending upon where you live and your current situation.

How to Prepare

Food — If you’ve been paying attention to alternative news (because much of what’s really going on doesn’t reach the main stream media), you know that the violent changes in the weather (flooding, along with early winter storms) in the past two years has virtually destroyed the food supply in the U.S. midwest. This extreme weather and crop destruction has always happened at 172 year (and larger) cycle tops. For example, in 1315 in Europe (the year 1320 was the theoretical 172 year top):

Then in the summer of 1314, the weather turned cold and very wet. Rain fell incessantly. Crops rotted in the fields. Grain harvests were late and desperately short.

These disturbances seemed at first to be nearly another routine disaster of a sort that had often afflicted medieval Europe. Crops had fallen short before. In the winter of 1314, people tightened their belts and prayed for better times.

But the next harvest was worse. The spring of 1315 brought heavy rain throughout Europe. Stormy weather lashed the continent for months. Dykes collapsed in England and the low countries. Entire fields washed away in France. Villages were destroyed by rising rivers in Germany. Once again grain and fodder crops failed.

Then, inconceivably, torrential rains came again and 1316. The grain crop failed a third year in a row. Europe began to experience the worst famine in its history.

Some historians estimate that a 10th of Europe’s teaming population perished in the years 1315 to 1316. — The Great Wave by David Hackett Fischer

As it’s getting colder and dryer, we’re going to experience major food shortages brought on by a shorter growing season and the lack of rainfall. Historically, this combination has led to famine on an international level.

You can start to stock up on the necessities, start a garden, create other means of harvesting food (chickens for example — very popular in the Great Depression), or look into freeze-dried foods that come in bulk and last up to 25 years. The best-tasting of the freeze dried offerings is from Mountain House.

Canadian Mountain House online packages can be found here.

Water — You can’t live very long without fresh water. With the coming stock market collapse, many of the businesses you frequent now will no longer exist. Transporation systems are already starting to collapse. National trucking companies are going bankrupt at a rate not seen before in modern history. The shipping industry has been in dire straits for the past few years. In short, the supply system that brings product to market is breaking down.

The result is that bottled water will start to get difficult to obtain. As a result, it’s best to locate yourself close to fresh water, preferably within walking distance. There are lots of tools available to help you purify water that you might be drinking other than out of the tap, and as we know, you can’t always count on that for purity. My favourite is Lifestraw.

Energy — It’s getting colder and dryer overall and this will be a continuing trend over the next couple of hundred years. My video on the future of climate is here.

The climate change “cult” has done their best to limit our energy resources just at the time we’re going to need them. Green energy does not have the power to provide needed energy in a downturn, particularly in colder countries. Another issue is infrastructure; Infrastructure in many cases has not been maintained. You’re seeing rolling blackouts in places like California, for example, due to electrical systems that are starting to fall apart due to lack of maintenance.

Governments around the world are bankrupt. In a stock market crash, jobs across many government-funded agencies will be reduced or eliminated. It makes sense if you own a home to consider a generator. There are lots of them on the market. It’s best to make sure your generator will handle more than one fuel source, like propane, for example.

Money — Your money is changing in value (it’s been changing in value since the early ’70s). Governments always inflate away its value (in essence, they’re stealing from you) so that a dollar today is worth about four cents, compared to what is was worth a hundred years ago — it’s why everyone is so broke (wages have not kept up to the rise in prices or increases in taxation).

With deflation, currency becomes more scarce and more valuable. You’re about to see your money increase in buying power as prices for just about everything start to plummet.

It’s a complicated story but it’s well worth your while to learn about both inflation and deflation, as it will change the way you plan and handle your financial affairs.

Silver coins are a good idea when the financial situation worsens (the system collapses altogether). However, precious metals are “assets” and in a deflationary environment, all assets drop in value. I’ll be developing video and articles on money, deflation, gold and silver, and the banking system in the months to come.

Learn about the banking system. Private banks are not generally going to be a safe place to store your money; we’re going to see lots of bank failures internationally when the stock market plunges in a couple of years. More on how banks work here.

Health — Exercise is really important during a major financial downturn.. It helps to keep you psychologically outside the realm of depression. Public and private health systems will end up with funding problems and there’ll be a health crisis right across the world. You need to keep your spirits up and create achievable goals even when things seem tough. Downturns like this have happened over and over again throughout history. The tough and tenacious always survive and prosper. Make sure to keep your vitamin intact, up, particularly vitamin D.

Colder and dryer climate sparks pandemics. You’re starting to see major diseases like black plague, measles, ebola, and others starting to crop up; we’ve already started into the colder climate cycle. The COVID-19 “pandemic” is more like seasonal flu — not nearly on a scale with diseases like the bubonic plague, or smallpox. Millions and millions of lives were lost in cold-dry periods in the past. This time will not be any different. Pay attention to your health.

Shelter — Real estate prices have topped generally all over the world (as result of the turning of the 18.5 year real estate cycle). Dropping asset prices are deflationary, and it would be a good idea to understand how  the changing value of money affects your net worth and what to do about it. You can find more information on deflation here.

At the bottom of the stock market crash, we’re expecting real estate prices to be about 20% of what they were at their height, say in 2018. Buying a home now (or anytime in the past ten years) is not a good idea. Selling one and renting is a much better idea for at least the next five to six years.

Large asset purchases of any type at the top of a major cycle can have lasting negative effects on your net worth, and can even force you into bankruptcy.

Safety — When populations get hungry, chaos erupts. Colder/dryer climate cycles usher in riots, unrest, and eventually, civil war. People in desperate situations do desperate things.

In the 1930s, many well-off families dressed in old clothes and made sure not to drive through town in an expensive car. Visible wealth of any kind tends to become a target quickly — it can become a social liability.

Depending upon where you live, it’s a good time to prepare methods to protect yourself in the face of an attack. When society starts to break down, you will need to be able to defend yourself. Police and other services will be limited, and possibly unavailable.

During depressions, cities tend to be less safe than rural areas. There’s typically a large migration to the country as a depression starts to make life more difficult in packed spaces. Articles are starting to appear quite regularly regarding the move away from cities and states that are not well-off financially. Bankrupt governments don’t provide many of the usual services that people have come to expect during the good times.

Psychological Support — Going forward, family is going to be much more important than ever before. Patch up any relationship issues, if possible — you may need to band together for lodging and security during the most difficult times ahead. Know who your friends are and take time to strengthen those bonds.

We’re going into a period which will be much more of a challenge than the 1930s (the Great Depression) — a complete financial meltdown will result in a depression several times deeper than we’ve seen in the past 500 years.

The first jobs that come back during a depression are blue collar jobs. People will need things fixed and if you have the ability to provide services to those in your community, you’ll be well sought-after, becoming a revered member of your community.

Remember, we’re all going to be in the same leaky boat. If you have the ability and desire to help your fellow human beings, now is your time to shine.

Know the Past. See the Future

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