Russ,
Wasn't MA expecting some kind of historic peak around 2040? If so, wouldn't his latest essay citing 23-26 Depressioniary Cycle represent a dramatic shift in his thinking about LT economic confidence cycle?
Hi linrom1,
Actually the economic confidence model is made up of the 8.6 year pi cycle but the bigger component of it is the 51.6 year cycle which is 8.6 times 6, as noted by the Astronet site the half point of the 51.6 is 26 and that hit in early 2007 along with the 8.6 year. Interesting that the number 26 was very important to the Mayan's and also as Armstrong pointed out the number for gosh as derived from the jewish word Jehova (when alphabets also represented numbers).
But back to the confidence model, the private 51.6 year cycle which we are in now and started in 1981 will peak in 2032 and end in 2037. It was my understanding that confidence would remain with the private markets until 2032 and therefore the stock markets would keep rising into that time period. What Armstrong is writing now seems to be throwing all that into serious question. Although I know that since the early 1990's at least he had been pesimistic about things after his 1998.55 date which did end up showing the internal high in the US stock markets for the dot com era, this can be seen on the value line geometric index XVG on stockcharts.com which is supposed to show what the average stock is doing. He stated in the early 1990's that we were headed for a major international debt crisis, that we were going to live major economic history, so I think his view was that after 1998 things would start to get critical and as I said in a 1999 article on my blog he said that it would be obvious that by late 2007 everything was not ok.
So bottom line... if confidence in the government bond markets is lost in this private wave then perhaps that is appropriate behaviour for a private wave, people would stop having trust in government to manage tax dollars and more private trends would emerge. Another thing to note is what he says about the government bonds, the view that they are not part of M1 is wrong, it is still a form of printing money, the debts are incurred and the interest rate time bomb starts to tick away.
That was a good observation of yours that Armstrong pointing out that letting interest rates go to usereous levels is what led to the massive debt we now have and the strained US workers as well as offshore manufacturing. Action and then reaction. It is too late to fix it now, the horses have escaped from the barn, the plane has hit the mountain. It is now just damage control that will be the future.
I like your avatar btw.
"Nulla tenaci invia est via" - Latin for "For the tenacious, no road is impossible".
"In order to master the markets, you must first master yourself" ... JP Morgan
"Most people lose money because they cannot admit they are wrong"... Martin Armstrong
http://marketvisions.blogspot.com/