Why a book you might not have heard of is more important than ever right now

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

This article may be the most powerful thing you'll read this month

Yes it has doom and gloom, but we're in doom and gloom times. The book you might not have heard of is called The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

I'll post some quotes from his article for the TL;DR crowd

 

[Meredith Poor + 883]

"...with the global financial collapse, created by the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street co-conspirator owners..." exposes this whole story as economically illiterate.Generally people writing stuff like this are selling gold or other precious metals - their idea is to drive down securities markets and get people to 'flee to safety'. I've been handed references to stories like this since I was in high school, which was in the early 1970's.

Over time, occupations bifurcate into smaller and more specialized concentrations. Consider how simple cars were in the 1960's compared to today, and then consider people that specialize in electric cars, hybrids, diesels, RVs, jet skis/snowmobiles, and so forth. Cars in the 1960's didn't have tire pressure monitors, anti-lock brakes, driver assistance modules, or computers of any sort. Few car bodies were made out of aluminum or plastic.

More specialized roles need to live in larger cities. Truck drivers can make a living in a town with 10,000 people. Database Administrators might find a job with a local school district, but one living in such a town is most likely to commute to a city with a population in the millions.

This suggests that real estate valuations will tend to shrink in rural areas and rise markedly in economically viable urban areas. Lots of 'manufacturing core' cities will decline, while a few 'tech centers' will rapidly add population.

Someone just driving around will see a lot of depressing landscapes, but this won't necessarily reflect the average economic circumstances of a household. Drive along a US highway (US 90 or US 1 are good examples) and one sees a lot of ruin. Drive along IH10 or I95 and the picture is radically different, even though these highways parallel US 90 or US 1, respectively.

In general, any asset has a lifetime, and the same goes with various industries. Therefore, if one is measuring the decline and fall of incumbents (with their huge number of employees and retirees) one is only dimly aware of the economic potential of their disruptors. The 'disruptors' are necessarily smaller, producing the same value with fewer employees.

Anyone reading future prognostications should consider the agendas, hidden or otherwise, of the authors. In some cases they have simply found markets that consume their material, and they have no further motivation than to make money. In other cases, they are making subtle attempts to manipulate the public. One has to think a few steps ahead of such individuals.

[BradleyPNW + 282]

Neither author has citations on Google Scholar. Yet, "William Strauss and Neil Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history."

No. Not how it works. Their theory isn't provocative it's garbage. Strauss and Howe are in Bible Code land. There's no such thing as historical cycles or repeating patterns "that last about twenty years and that always arrive in the same order."

Whenever an article or book is written investigate the author(s) first. Are they experts in the area they claim expertise? If not, is their premise consistent with the relevant subject matter experts? If so, why are they writing the article/book rather than a subject matter experts? 

Good lord, " Placed in the context of history's long rhythms..." 🙄

[El Nikko + 2,145]

I still don't see how we're going back to 'normal' after this massive spending spree and job losses. Do people really think we'll bounce back?

For me this has been a complete horror show and it looks like we could be in for a lot of pain for years to come.

Yes I do read Zero Hedge articles amongst others including mainstream ones and the author's opinions sound inline with ZH. Now ZH was described once as 'apocalyptic porn' or something similar and I always remembered that and bared it in mind when reading their articles but at the same time I've also felt we've been sitting on a ticking time bomb ever since 2008. I expected (guestimated) a recession a few years ago (around 2017/2018) and when it didn't happen it made me a little uneasy because I think the signs were there especially in Europe. We've now been in one of the longest periods of 'growth' (partly due to QE and artificially cheap money?) and every year that went by I thought it would be even worse once it happened...and then the virus appeared and blew the lid off everything.

Yes I read a lot and don't know much about 'economics' although it kinda sounds like neither do many economists. I still think there are concerns and issues in the article that are valid even if not all of them, but now 'something' has finally happened even if it wasn't normal market forces and we're going to find out pretty soon I guess.

I have to say I am always interested in hearing what people think is coming down the line and especially now more than ever, I have always quite enjoyed making predictions and writing them down somewhere and then going back a few years/months later to see how I did. Of course that does mean I get a lot of eye rolling etc, like that time ~14 years ago when I told people we would leave the EU, oh how they all laughed 😂🤣. I suppose even a broken clock is right twice a day though.

 

[M_Ali + 32]

Steve Banon, the relegated Prince of Darkness or Richard Pearl of Trump's wacky Administration, considers himself a " Revolutionary Leninist" in his own words , and as such he considers William Strauss, the co-author (with Neil Howe) of the above book as his historian, social political philosopher mentor or his "Carl Marx".

Banon is the flag bearing knight in shining armor or the Duke Cowboy of the ideological war against the CCP the manufacturers and exporters of Wuhan Virus causing massive American death and debt. 

Strauss-Niel Generation theory based on cyclic recurring mood eras in American history sets the scene for describing what he calls the Turnings (High, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis), Cycle and Archetype characterless (Prophet, Nomad, Hero, Artist), subdividing the American generations into 7 subdivision from medieval age to millennium age. He sees himself as the Hero Facing the Crisis. 

Banon a former GS Banker and film maker wrote and directed a documentary film called Generation Zero based on the events of the 2008 sub prime mortgage driven financial crisis released in 2010 drawing heavily from the above book philosophy of American history. 

Banon is a one hell of an all American "Marxist-Leninist" revolutionary ideologue graduate from many schools such as national security, navy, business, investment banking, entertainment, movie & media but to name a few.

Steven Banon as a right-wing populist and paleo-conservative nationalist is probably the most well known student of  Strauss-Neil Book on cyclically recurring moods of American history as well as most mocked by some satiric TV networks for his wacky political views and world outlook. 

 

[El Nikko + 2,145]

17 minutes ago, M_Ali said:

Steve Banon, the relegated Prince of Darkness or Richard Pearl of Trump's wacky Administration, considers himself a " Revolutionary Leninist" in his own words , and as such he considers William Strauss, the co-author (with Neil Howe) of the above book as his historian, social political philosopher mentor or his "Carl Marx".

Banon is the flag bearing knight in shining armor or the Duke Cowboy of the ideological war against the CCP the manufacturers and exporters of Wuhan Virus causing massive American death and debt. 

Strauss-Niel Generation theory based on cyclic recurring mood eras in American history sets the scene for describing what he calls the Turnings (High, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis), Cycle and Archetype characterless (Prophet, Nomad, Hero, Artist), subdividing the American generations into 7 subdivision from medieval age to millennium age. He sees himself as the Hero Facing the Crisis. 

Banon a former GS Banker and film maker wrote and directed a documentary film called Generation Zero based on the events of the 2008 sub prime mortgage driven financial crisis released in 2010 drawing heavily from the above book philosophy of American history. 

Banon is a one hell of an all American "Marxist-Leninist" revolutionary ideologue graduate from many schools such as national security, navy, business, investment banking, entertainment, movie & media but to name a few.

Steven Banon as a right-wing populist and paleo-conservative nationalist is probably the most well known student of  Strauss-Neil Book on cyclically recurring moods of American history as well as most mocked by some satiric TV networks for his wacky political views and world outlook. 

 

Can you give some sources for the stuff you say about Bannon, that would be interesting.

I will say that Breitbart and Bannon & Co have used real nationalists (including ethnonationalists) as their foot soldiers during the last election and then later he attacked them and threw them under a bus.

Nowadays he talks about economic nationalism which is a bit strange

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

7 hours ago, BradleyPNW said:

Neither author has citations on Google Scholar. Yet, "William Strauss and Neil Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history."

No. Not how it works. Their theory isn't provocative it's garbage. Strauss and Howe are in Bible Code land. There's no such thing as historical cycles or repeating patterns "that last about twenty years and that always arrive in the same order."

Whenever an article or book is written investigate the author(s) first. Are they experts in the area they claim expertise? If not, is their premise consistent with the relevant subject matter experts? If so, why are they writing the article/book rather than a subject matter experts? 

Good lord, " Placed in the context of history's long rhythms..." 🙄

Good lord if only the author of the piece I linked was named Strauss or Howe. But yeah, TL; DR so you didn't get it. The author likes to throw in quotes from them, which establishes the gestalt of his diatribe. Ray Dalio has the exact same predictions on recurring events. But yeah, he's only a billionaire, he's not as smart as you, mixing up those lattes in your barrista gig. 

Here's a sample involving the Central Bank.  I'm the one, months ago who brought the Repo market to everyone's attention here. Crickets. I wasn't wrong, I'm rarely ever wrong. Go back through my posts. I was out of this market by mid January. I'd recommended everyone get out, no one seems to have. 

Quote

The financial engine driving the American economy blew a gasket in September 2019. Overnight repo rates soared to 10%, indicating a major malfunction under the hood, threatening the wealth and safety of our beloved Wall Street bankers and billionaire hedge fund managers, picking up nickels in front of steamrollers. Jerome jumped into action, to save his billionaire owners. The QT was turned off and QE spigot was back on. He ramped the Fed’s balance sheet by over $400 billion in three months, with three 25 basis point cuts going into 2020.

Those in the know understood there were major problems in the financial system, as excessive risk taking, non-existent banking oversight by the Fed, and more corporate, consumer and government debt that could never be serviced, pushing the Ponzi scheme engine to the brink. Then lo and behold the China flu arrived as cover for another plunder and pillage subversion perpetrated against the American people by the ruling oligarchs.

 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

9 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

"...with the global financial collapse, created by the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street co-conspirator owners..." exposes this whole story as economically illiterate.Generally people writing stuff like this are selling gold or other precious metals - their idea is to drive down securities markets and get people to 'flee to safety'. I've been handed references to stories like this since I was in high school, which was in the early 1970's.

Over time, occupations bifurcate into smaller and more specialized concentrations. Consider how simple cars were in the 1960's compared to today, and then consider people that specialize in electric cars, hybrids, diesels, RVs, jet skis/snowmobiles, and so forth. Cars in the 1960's didn't have tire pressure monitors, anti-lock brakes, driver assistance modules, or computers of any sort. Few car bodies were made out of aluminum or plastic.

More specialized roles need to live in larger cities. Truck drivers can make a living in a town with 10,000 people. Database Administrators might find a job with a local school district, but one living in such a town is most likely to commute to a city with a population in the millions.

This suggests that real estate valuations will tend to shrink in rural areas and rise markedly in economically viable urban areas. Lots of 'manufacturing core' cities will decline, while a few 'tech centers' will rapidly add population.

Someone just driving around will see a lot of depressing landscapes, but this won't necessarily reflect the average economic circumstances of a household. Drive along a US highway (US 90 or US 1 are good examples) and one sees a lot of ruin. Drive along IH10 or I95 and the picture is radically different, even though these highways parallel US 90 or US 1, respectively.

In general, any asset has a lifetime, and the same goes with various industries. Therefore, if one is measuring the decline and fall of incumbents (with their huge number of employees and retirees) one is only dimly aware of the economic potential of their disruptors. The 'disruptors' are necessarily smaller, producing the same value with fewer employees.

Anyone reading future prognostications should consider the agendas, hidden or otherwise, of the authors. In some cases they have simply found markets that consume their material, and they have no further motivation than to make money. In other cases, they are making subtle attempts to manipulate the public. One has to think a few steps ahead of such individuals.

So, to be clear, you didn't bother reading or understanding what this author actually wrote but pretended you were reading articles from other authors "since high school". Great, does all your life work out like that? 

Meanwhile gold isn't even in the cards but yeah, pretend that's what he was talking about. 

For those interested in reading what the author actually wrote here's a sample: 

Quote

champagne and caviar class in the history of mankind has been executed with precision and flawlessness by high tech criminals and their propaganda spewing corporate media compatriots.

This global pandemic is the crisis they couldn’t let go to waste. There is a myriad of theories on where, how, and why this global pandemic began. The accidental release of the virus from a bio-weapons lab in Wuhan appears to be the most likely scenario, with the Chinese authorities covering up the nature and seriousness of the virus and allowing infected citizens to spread it throughout the world. This narrative will likely play into the bloody climax of this Fourth Turning.

What we do know for sure is Trump was convinced by government bureaucrat medical “experts”, using seriously flawed models, that more than 2 million Americans would die unless he quarantined the entire nation. Extrapolating the disastrous NYC results across the entire U.S. and shutting down the entire economy will prove to be one of the most disastrous decisions ever made by a U.S. president.

Instead of addressing a virus only marginally more lethal than the yearly flu in a rational fact-based manner, we allowed ourselves to be snowed by “experts” and authoritarian politicians who originally downplayed the threat, instructed everyone to not use face masks, and purposely put infected patients into nursing homes. Cuomo is hailed as a hero by his brother’s joke of a news network, when he should be scorned as an inept bungler who caused the deaths of thousands.

 

[BradleyPNW + 282]

12 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

Ray Dalio has the exact same predictions on recurring events. But yeah, he's only a billionaire, he's not as smart as you, mixing up those lattes in your barrista gig.

Bill Gates is a super-billionaire. So is Jeff Bezos. So what do you do if they contradict Ray Dalio? Because I noticed your argument from authority appears to have a potential for collapsing into oblivion. Also, I make the best lattes. You should try one. 

[Meredith Poor + 883]

8 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

This global pandemic is the crisis they couldn’t let go to waste

This is simply another example of 'conspiracy' by some elite cabal.

I've worked in government at various times (City, State, and Federal) and spent the last 50 years writing and implementing software applications. Trying to get three people to understand a simply concept in a phone call is an ordeal, much less a 'champagne and caviar class'. The only people that buy this kind of baloney are people that think 'someone else' is responsible for all their problems. I run into these people all the time, and they spend money liberally searching for scapegoats. 

[BradleyPNW + 282]

12 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

The accidental release of the virus from a bio-weapons lab in Wuhan appears to be the most likely scenario, with the Chinese authorities covering up the nature and seriousness of the virus and allowing infected citizens to spread it throughout the world.

Yeah, so that's a big negatory. The virus is zoonotic. Of course, billionaires are our ultimate authority so the subject matter experts need to adjust their theory to match billionaire opinions. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7086482/

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

5 hours ago, BradleyPNW said:

Also, I make the best lattes. You should try one

Actually, that's funny!  Delighted to see you are developing a nice wry sense of humor.  Cheers.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

5 hours ago, BradleyPNW said:

Yeah, so that's a big negatory. The virus is zoonotic.

Sure is.  So, don't eat monkey-meat and stay away from those pangolins they sell in the wet markets in China.  Bad stuff, that.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

5 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

What we do know for sure is Trump was convinced by government bureaucrat medical “experts”, using seriously flawed models, that more than 2 million Americans would die unless he quarantined the entire nation. Extrapolating the disastrous NYC results across the entire U.S. and shutting down the entire economy will prove to be one of the most disastrous decisions ever made by a U.S. president.

The US President does not have the authority to "shut down" the US economy or anything else; that auhority (albeit dubious) is reserved to State Governors  (and I rather doubt even they have that authority, but that is another issue).  What Trump does have the authority over is:  in-migrant visas, the Border, air traffic control, the TSA, imports of foodstuffs, and Federal installatioins such as military bases and (of course) the big prison at Guantanamo for the undesirables.  For the rest, it is basically only jaw-boning. 

Note to readers: the quote above is actually from something that Ward quoted, and not his words.  Just to be clear. 

Edited May 13, 2020 by Jan van Eck
added Note to Readers

[0R0 + 6,251]

15 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

This article may be the most powerful thing you'll read this month

Yes it has doom and gloom, but we're in doom and gloom times. The book you might not have heard of is called The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

I'll post some quotes from his article for the TL;DR crowd

 

While I agree with the writer about the political actions and the deliberate attempts to quash the economy by Democratic governors and the corporatist + China + Democrat alliance, I have shifted far from the simplistic understanding of the fiat dollar system as I delved deeper to understand it and where it actually is, and how it works (or doesn't). Where the author sees an inflationary Fed causing a credit bubble, I see a deflationary Fed not keeping up with the enormous capital flows into the US and not compensating for them with monetary inflation, but creating ever greater imbalance between the amount of outstanding debt and the cash available to pay it. 

The US credit bubble was created in the Eurodollar system as China externalized its rapid money printing and gained industrial market share by subsidizing loss making exports (for China) and producing fat profits for US and EU outsourcers. Their inflation of the Eurodollar system, as explained in prior posts, followed a 3 step process each of which had potential to induce credit into the US, which it did. They accumulated reserves (buying bonds with offshore dollars, thus making them domestic US dollars no different from the Fed's QE) and contracted commodities  by posting the bonds as collateral thus pushing commodity prices through the roof and wrecking the profitability of industries around the globe. This second arm of leverage brought money to the commodity producing nations that ALSO put it in reserves and inflated US credit. As each of these legs went through the banking system, it was leveraged once again, internally in the Eurodollar system. The US banks were circumvented during the US credit bubble decade, brokers merely transmitted lending from abroad into the US, be it capital flight from Japan, or later the Asian Tiger NICs, or from the EU and now Chinese capital flight, this overwhelmed US banking that fell to a 25-30% share of fresh credit. 

This resulted in a huge and unstable disproportion of credit to cash in the US, THAT led to the 2008 crash and China's loss making industry squashed the value added of the Western economy and froze industrial production at 1999 levels or less. 

I agree the malicious economic sabotage this CV19 epidemic of panic by the Democratic party is a trigger event for an explosive reaction from the right and center. Real estate information firm Redfin is observing that the accelerating drip of migration out of the Dem cities is already turning into a massive exodus. 

The state bailout being worked on by the congress will never make it out of the Senate till the states completely open their economies and are out of cash for several months to the point of not being able to pay State and city employees. The deal will have a huge subsidy for the reindustrialization of the US to push supply chains out of China, and gutting of regulatory impediments. That means that the Dem states see none of that money and the pittance of bail outs will not leave them with a future. If they persist, they will end up like Flint Michigan. Boston, New York, LA, SF Seattle, Detroit and Chicago. Their anti-industry policies will cause the capital and its subsidies to skip the coasts as their populations seek to leave the cities and telecommute or work where work is essential, but government is not.

If the Obamagate fiasco proceeds as rapidly and widely as it seems ready to be, then the clash against the Dems will be thunderous and may radiate to the governors. 

 

[0R0 + 6,251]

6 hours ago, BradleyPNW said:

Yeah, so that's a big negatory. The virus is zoonotic. Of course, billionaires are our ultimate authority so the subject matter experts need to adjust their theory to match billionaire opinions. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7086482/

That is as much supposition as the other side's claim. The virus is precisely as described by Dr. Zhi Zhingli's team's publications where they describe how they developed these exact features observed in CV19 from existing bat coronaviruses and their extreme contagion and ability to jump species. 

Learned supposition and opinion does not substitute for proof. 

Not to speak of the fact that no attempt was made to prove the origin. The bat coronavirus in question with 96% of genetic identity did not have an S protein spike for ACE2 receptors. As described by the Wuhan Virologists' publications, they did take several such bat coronaviruses and added to them the RNA coding for the S spike proteins among several other modifications attempted over more than a decade, and as was done in several other virology labs trying to predict future mutations and their effect on a virus' pathology. 

Edited May 13, 2020 by 0R0

[0R0 + 6,251]

14 hours ago, BradleyPNW said:

Neither author has citations on Google Scholar. Yet, "William Strauss and Neil Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history."

No. Not how it works. Their theory isn't provocative it's garbage. Strauss and Howe are in Bible Code land. There's no such thing as historical cycles or repeating patterns "that last about twenty years and that always arrive in the same order."

Whenever an article or book is written investigate the author(s) first. Are they experts in the area they claim expertise? If not, is their premise consistent with the relevant subject matter experts? If so, why are they writing the article/book rather than a subject matter experts? 

Good lord, " Placed in the context of history's long rhythms..." 🙄

That is exactly as Neil Howe and Strauss speak of the progression of their generational cycles. They have garnered much respect for developing this analysis. I am skeptical, but don't reject the theory. It is after all, a historical analysis of social trends, hardly something you would be able to prove scientifically. 

[0R0 + 6,251]

7 hours ago, BradleyPNW said:

Bill Gates is a super-billionaire. So is Jeff Bezos. So what do you do if they contradict Ray Dalio? Because I noticed your argument from authority appears to have a potential for collapsing into oblivion. Also, I make the best lattes. You should try one. 

Bezos and Gates have very particular views of the world, Gates' is particularly repugnant.  Ray Dalio is a dispassionate analyst of social and economic trends and events and their effects in financial real estate and commodity markets. He has made several fortunes out of this skill. I would listen to him before I listen to Gates, who has hung up his cleats over a decade ago. 

[M_Ali + 32]

15 hours ago, El Nikko said:

Can you give some sources for the stuff you say about Bannon, that would be interesting.

I will say that Breitbart and Bannon & Co have used real nationalists (including ethnonationalists) as their foot soldiers during the last election and then later he attacked them and threw them under a bus.

Nowadays he talks about economic nationalism which is a bit strange

I don't recall a specific external source on SB (Wiki was a starting point, his own published works, speeches) but when he first appeared on the scene as chief strategist very early in Trump's camp I did some research on him and got an overall view on his personal and ideological background. Opportunism, Expediency, Flexibility, Fluidity, Selective Forgetfulness, Lies, Denials, Charlatanism, Conniving, wheeling & Dealing are all commendable traits of top politicians. For their despicable and criminal insanity traits poor Steve is way below the ranks of  the likes of George Dulles, Lyndon, Nixon, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Chaney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Bushes etc. 

He barks way above his intellectual bites, that's why he appeals to his Fox News, right wing, white supremacist and working class nationalist audience. 

His economic nationalism if genuine is a fair point in itself from the points of view of working and small business classes of America who have lost their jobs and industries to cheap far East sweat shops competition over several decades curtsy of inventors of global supply chain, but his ambitious Imperialist xenophobic rhetoric compromise his true color and legion. 

 

[El Nikko + 2,145]

I'm about a quarter of the way through it and so far there is little I disagree with.

One thing that has worried me over the years was the political polarisation that happened before Brexit and Trump and I hoped that once the dust settled things would calm down, Trump even spoke of healing the nation in his inaugeration speech, but instead the 'left' just refused point blank to accept the will of the people and the divisions remained and were even stoked up by media pundits, celebs and politicians.

In that kind of climate I suppose a lid can be kept on things providing people have something to lose and are comfortable but the economic destruction we've just witnessed could change that.

I have to say I am quite worried about the future and it is really strange to talk to people who seem more worried about catching a virus that probably wont do them much harm that what is going to come next. Even in the best case millions of people will still suffer even if it's just for a few months but my fear is this could last for several years.

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

This is an interesting thread.  And no matter what you guys say, I'm interested in @Meredith Poor's opinion going forward as well.  Anyone who's studied the writings and types of authors over a number of decades should see both his interest renewed and have an interesting insight to what is currently being written/posited vs the past.

Sorry, Meredith.  I was just reminded that you identify as a man.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Dan Warnick
Gender realignment

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

What major bank will be the first to fall?  And how many may follow?  Or are the bailouts designed to stop that this time around?

[El Nikko + 2,145]

3 minutes ago, Dan Warnick said:

What major bank will be the first to fall?  And how many may follow?  Or are the bailouts designed to stop that this time around?

Deutsche Bank has to be a candidate

[BradleyPNW + 282]

6 hours ago, 0R0 said:

That is exactly as Neil Howe and Strauss speak of the progression of their generational cycles. They have garnered much respect for developing this analysis. I am skeptical, but don't reject the theory. It is after all, a historical analysis of social trends, hardly something you would be able to prove scientifically. 

They didn't supply a theory. I used that term loosely while mocking them, as in their "theory" is roundly laughed at by professional historians. I'm at a loss to describe how silly their premise of repeating historical patterns is so I took the easy way out and likened it to Bible Codes; they made up a curve then sliced and diced their data to match the curve, then they went back and erased data that contradicted their made up curve. Their thesis is a joke. 

Historians and sociologists use methodology analogous to science. A quick way to test quality of an author claiming to work in a field of expertise is to check their citations. Howe and Strauss, none. No citations in any field of expertise despite the fact their book has existed since 1993. That's not a good sign. Reading their book to understand American history is kind of like reading a Dan Brown novel to learn European history. 

[BradleyPNW + 282]

6 hours ago, 0R0 said:

Bezos and Gates have very particular views of the world, Gates' is particularly repugnant.  Ray Dalio is a dispassionate analyst of social and economic trends and events and their effects in financial real estate and commodity markets. He has made several fortunes out of this skill. I would listen to him before I listen to Gates, who has hung up his cleats over a decade ago. 

I was mocking the idea that billionaires are authorities on subjects based on the fact they are billionaires.