[Lula-biz] suicide as a career move

[Jack Denman]

On Thursday 07 August 2003 11:07 pm, john riehl aka j.r. wrote:
> Jack Denman wrote:
> > The problem I have with this view is that it's rational. The biggest wars
> > were began without any rational thinking.
> >
> > Wars don't cure bad economies; they are part of the bad economy coming at
> > the end of the bad cycle. Examples are World War II 1941 (after the crash
> > of 1929), Korean War (Ressession of 1952), Vietnam War (Resession of
> > 1974), Gulf War (Resession of 1990-1991) and possibiliy the Iraq War
> > assumming we don't have another.
>
> There are two major problems with this.  1) if wars are irrational, then
> why are they linked to a business cycle?  this seems contradictory.
> 2) the dates dont line up with business cycles.

The answer is that we don't know the how they are linked but we do know that 
they are linked. Cause and effect are almost impossible to prove. Correlation 
is far easier to show. The end or bottoms of business cycles do line up with 
the end of the wars. The explanation for the correlation has yet to be 
determined. We only know that it exists by repetitive examination of the data 
with thousands of observations that show the same correlation.

> specific date issues:
> 1. if the crash signals the end of the bad economy, ww2 should have
> begun in 1929.  strangely, germany in the mid 1930s seemed relatively
> quite prosperous, compared to anytime since ww1.  the german economy had
> collapsed in 1923.

You are confused. I said wars come at the end of the bad cycle, not the 
beginning. The beginning od the bad business cycle came in 1929 but the end 
came near 1941-1945 not 1929.


> 2.  the vietnam war didnt start in 1974.

Again, you are confused. I stated that wars come at the end of the bad cycle 
not the beginning. The war actually ended in late 1973 and the bottom of the 
DJIA came in September of 1974 just a few months later when the DJIA fell to 
675 after falling from 1000 in 1960. The correlation is clear but approximate 
to the dates and not analytically perfect, but close enough for a repetitive 
correlation.

> 3.  we didnt have a major war in 1946, in 1957, in 1982 (that would be
> the double dip war, from the double dip recession), in 1987.  In fact we
> should have a major war at least every 7 years.  we're missing a whole
> lot of wars.

There was no war in 1946 or in 1957 or 1982 and no double dip war as seen on 
this chart of 100 years of the Dow Jones. I have a database of every single 
trading days activity including high, low open and close and can give you the 
data on every day. There is no double dip or recession or wars in 1946,1947 
and 1982.

http://users.adelphia.net/~cashmere/DJ-30_SEMI.jpg

> 4. there have been lots of wars without an economic downturn.  what did
> start the Chaco war?  (without looking it up).

There always are wars in progress at any point in history dating back 
thousands of years to the dawn of history, but not wars that are significant 
to the correlation, especially to the United Stares. They can be correlated 
with the economy. In other words, small wars, small correlation to the 
economic / war thesis.

> wars, with a soundbyte 3rd grade level explaination sound really
> irrational, but they are not so irrational.  there is often an economic
> link (balance of power vis-a-vis resource struggle), but not necessarily
> "a bad economy".  Further, there is linkage between economic distress
> and armed conflict, but it is not so empirically linked as to be at the
> end of the bad economy.    Wars do spurn production and employment,
> potentially ending an economic depression (it is a matter of scale), but
> when the war ends, this boom ends, the economy crashes again (rosie the
> riveter gets laid off).   this isnt a history discussion list, so I will
> stop now.

I say that it's an illusion that wars do spurn production and employment. 
After World War II, inflation was rampant and out of control, to pay for the 
war, the loss of life was awesome, divorces reached a new high because of may 
factors, the iron curtain evolved, and many that fought on the war were 
distroyed emotionally, some in my family and a lot of pain. The government 
becan the GI plan to stop many of the negative aspect of the aftermath of the 
war. The WPA during the great depression of the 1930's and the Marshall Plan 
after the war provided more real benefits than the war itself.
So much of the above is jargon, not concise, not clear and not definitive. 
There is always a relationship between big wars that come at the end of a bad 
economy. There are other social correlations that can be made too, but they 
are not relevant to the discussion here. I am not alone in this idea and some 
of the most respected authorities from Harvard and others share this idea and 
they have written many books with evidence to correlate what I have said. I 
know because I have read them. They have researched the idea far more than 
you have.

>
> If you want to get full tech employment, release the mother of all
> viruses, that takes out all types of systems at the same time, forcing
> organizations to hire anybody who can fix it, and forcing them to be
> local to deal with the systems.    Further, tell me ahead of time, so I
> can get the reward money by turning you in.
>
> jr
> MBA et. al.

I don't regard this last statement as beneficial, relevant, educational 
valuable, or informative. It is cynicism, rancor or rage. It is anything but 
a proposed solution to a serious problem. You need to do better than that if 
you expect people take you seriously and you really have something to offer.

Jack Denman

_______________________________________________
Lula-biz mailing list
Lula-biz at lula.org
http://www.lula.org/mailman/listinfo/lula-biz