In August 2006 I heard something that scared the economist in me. Scared the community minded person I was. Capital markets so soon after the dot-com bubble were at it again but in a bigger way. The film the Big Short would follow but my take in 2006 was to not put any of my bonus on the pension. At the end of 2007 I was confused. The crash I'd expected hadn't happened. I was clearly stupid.
I proved the point by putting my January bonus into the markets and my only savings grace was I avoided all the financial companies, particularly banks.
I looked back at my Camino in 2007 when Northern Rock went under and although we discussed it I haven't seen me mentioning ah, the first domino. It was 14 months on from my previous assertion that markets would collapse and I was wrong.
My timings was wrong. That simple sentence is everything about markets. People do hindsight purchases of, "oh I was going to buy that, I thought they'd be taken over", very few say, "I was wrong. I underestimated the capacity of senior members of staff lying to survive". I have no excuse as I witnessed it first hand with the county NatWest £500-£600m backlog debacle in 1987.
People do not "fess up". They hide and hope. They draw wages as long as they can. For fucks sake it is the financial industry. We know it's full of blaggers and thieves. Never have a bunch of grifters been more self satisfied with their takings. They even do a great job of saying how much they deserve it.
So now as the 100 year anniversary of meltdown approaches and with my love of the executed Russian Economist from the 1920's what gives in 2026.
Nikolai Kondratiev would be smirking I'm sure. He liked his economic epochs. I'm sure he was more of a geological economic analyst than most. I adopted his thinking a while back. I liked his style. I thought of the world as moving in generations and he saw 40-60 year waves. I see the world through the prism of generations. I see it through my parents, grandparents, grandchildren etc. I also know everyone is born randomly at different times in the cycle.
The patterns I see are very clear to me. I see as I've said before, the stars aligning, the dominoes in a row, the repetition of history and the cycle.
I'm not sure how much rearming has in the cycle compared to super el ninos. Just like I'm not sure how much sentiment positive and negative creates its own balance.
I just know what's happening now will hit a wall.
Entertainment is most enjoyable, it's not an industry. When entertainment becomes an industry Rome is truly burning. Our eye is being kept off the ball or Tommy Cooper is fooling us and himself.
I can name about 20 dominoes that have now aligned to coincide with the 100 year anniversary creating a crash and hooverville. It's not a scare tactic it's a beware suggestion. It's a notice to have one eye on what is happening in your world.
I want to race forward to the winners and losers in 1930. There were clearly many losers and few winners.
My experience of 2006/07 means I need to not panic and milk the rise before the collapse. It's not easy though. I like to tell people about how this AI bubble will have corrections on the way to implosion but it won't happen next year.
There is a moment when it happens and I say 2030. I think house prices are starting to slide but not significantly as we have the rental sector first.
Prices will plummet but not yet. They only plummet when the cash has dried up. When the cash calls, on all the loans, start forcing those who are heavily geared, to sell.
Private equity bought the firm that owned the hospital bed my dad was in. USA money had come in and bought a yorkshire manufacturing company for £50m and I laughed. I read more about how much profit it did or didn't make now, how much tax it did or didn't pay now. I cried.
You can only play that game so long and then the country that supplies the workers can't supply them. In a Kondratiev Ordinary phase the capitalist moves the money on and sells the asset at prime time to an unsuspecting fool. Private equity analysts aren't as bright as they used to be. They will be left holding more babies as prime time has passed.
We are at the end of a technological and generational cycle.
Baby boomers will be hitting 75. AI will finally sell us what nobody needs.
Farmers will struggle to find feeds.
Farmers will struggle to feed us.
Infrastructure will fail and water supplies will become dangerously low.
Never mind your tequila latte, you'll struggle to find a beef pattie.
From celebrity restaurants with sporting clients we will find ourselves gorging on Greggs chefs talents.
It's going to be really hard and smaller communities will thrive. Larger ones will find social unrest difficult to manage.
I'll add to this later, as I say, enjoy it while it's here.
My top tip for anyone looking for a career in the next few years is either plumber or be an accountant or someone involved in adminstration. There will be 1000's of companies handing back the keys.
Poundland are going through the more at the moment and it's a warning shot across the bows that this is how easy it is to starve a profitable company if it's not making enough profit for its ownership.
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