I’m widely known as the “Muddle Through” guy, says John Mauldin
I don’t discount the severity of our problems or the pain they will cause, but I also think we’ll find solutions. That position displeases both optimists and pessimists but in my experience, it’s usually been right.
Cycles are the reason muddle-through works. We have both good and bad times, but sequentially. Any forecast for only positive or only negative outcomes is always wrong. We get both, one after the other.
The real mystery is their timing.
Neil Howe’s forthcoming book. I will review it in more depth when it’s published but here’s a quick taste.
“When did America’s most recent Fourth Turning begin? I reckon about 2008, with the eruption of the Global Financial Crisis--just as the previous Fourth Turning was triggered by the Great Crash of 1929, about 80 years before.
“Before 2008, the old Third-Turning America, while not in robust health, still functioned. In the mid-2000s, most voters still read the same news and trusted their government, the two parties still conferred on big issues, Congress still passed annual budgets, and most families remained hopeful about the nation’s future.
George Friedman has a somewhat different cycle theory, explained in his book The Storm Before the Calm. In his view, the US has a pattern of political shifts roughly every 50 years and wider social/institutional changes about every 80 years.
John Mauldin 10 June 2023
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