The Kondratieff 'Winter of Discontent'

We owe much of the above mentioned "economic distortions" to the radical intervention by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, to stave off the deflationary collapse and recession of the natural cyclic descent into the Winter phase of the K wave economic cycle. Greenspan's intervention was accomplished by an aggressive loose monetary policy effected by sharp credit cuts down to 1% from May 2000 to June 2003 accompanied by massive injections of liquidity. This policy was supplemented by the "recycling of vast US deficits by creditor nations through the US Bond markets." The resulting globalization of capital markets resulted in the exportation of US inflationary policy to international markets and laid the groundwork for the worldwide economic meltdown we are presently witnessing as Greenspan's successor, Mr. B.S. Bernanke, expands and amplifies his predecessor's policies.

As it has been made abundantly clear by many economists and commentators, any attempt to manipulate or forestall the natural economic cycles can and will have disastrous consequences, the results of which are becoming clearer with each further evolution of the economic crisis.

"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought on by credit expansion. The only alternative is whether the crisis should come sooner...or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved"-Ludwig von Mises

Even a cursory study of the K wave cycles reveal that economic life is subject to the same natural forces which are constantly seeking the state of equilibrium essential to the sustenance and continuation of organic forms. The inflation/debt cycles partake of this natural law, the violation of which creates the sever distortions that are presently taking place in both ecological and economic systems. Just as the excesses and imbalances in any physical system left untreated tend to create disturbance and disease, the artificial and toxic workings of fiat monetary policy only prolong the state of financial imbalance against the natural and effective purgation of recession creating an immense hangover of toxic residues which require an ever more violent and cathartic abreaction. The K wave cycle beginning in 1948 has thus been attenuated by manipulation from its average 54 year cycle to 59 years, with the result that the catastrophic destruction of the currency system referred to by von Mises is upon us. The question becomes then not whether such obvious exogenous technical manipulations have been accomplished by design but by what agency and to what purpose such design is actually intended.