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To: IndexTrader who wrote (1290)	2/21/2001 6:52:54 PM
From: Doo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12410

Boy, now I feel a whole lot better. Time to go eat some grains and do my part. Maybe I should start feeding grains in the barn, huh Chip? :)

To: IndexTrader who wrote (1290)	2/25/2001 12:54:47 AM
From: Chip McVickar	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 12410

Susan, Thank You for presenting that paper on K-Waves. There are a couple of personal observations that I'd like to share..., not as argumentative, or even persuasive just thoughts. 1]- 99.9% of the work coming off the Gold-Eagle web site is to incite the fear of impending disaster and encourage the reader to immediately dial-up and buy Gold, freeze dried foods, guns/ammo, a 10 acre country farm, and prepare to survive. The last event was Y2K...! There appears to be a method and a reason for this constant stream of work. The papers are usually well written and provide themes or some new evidence that time is running out. They capture the 'Fear' that surrounds these key words like "financial panic," "financial calamities," "runaway deflation" and other key phrases that carry the burden of proof that everything is about to end. They capture the essence of that insecurity of human life.... The Unexpected. Some years back I went out and bought some gold and silver coins, which were promptly buried in the back yard. Then I read a short study of the hyper inflation after Germany and Japan were defeated. Apparently, Gold and Silver coins were in such abundance they also became relatively useless as a means of barter. What was valuable...? Soap - candles - beer - alcohol - food - and the ability to make something someone else needed. 2]- Over the years I've read a lot about Cycles; Arnold Toynbee, Oswald Spengler, Kondratieff, Schumpeter, Prechter, Batra, etc.. Cyclical market-trends exist....but are almost impossible to use in pinpointing "exact" market turns.... there are so many variables, both mathematical and phenomenon-logical, that affect and alter the course of these types of projections. But societies and human thinking seems to follow broad patterns which 'can be determined' and often follow very deliberate courses. The prospect of being able to formulate models for long-wave economic cycles of prosperity and depression has been the topic of much discussion amongst scholars, economists and financial analysts for years. Recently and notably at MIT's Sloan School of Management... Systems Dynamic Group. Arnold Toynbee, the now forgotten historian who died in 1975, with his 12 volume 'A Study of History' was very eloquent. He was one of the first to formulate and demonstrate an integrated view of the cyclical nature of human societies. He compared the history of 21 different civilizations and traced a cyclical pattern of growth, maturity and decay in them all. He saw no reason why the great modern powers would not also follow the same patterns he had discovered. But he was far from an empiricist... more a mythologist or metaphysician than an empirical historian. But his work points out an underlying cyclical pattern to civilizations. If interested there is a condensed version of his work. Kondratieff's prediction of the great crash and ensuing world wide depression of the late 1920's-30's, was highly accurate. He also predicted the tremendous economic growth that would follow that great economic explosion. He believed that exact measurements were obtainable in 50-60 year cycles in free market economies and his work has been called the "K Wave." Presently, the claims he made in the early 1900's about the 1980's-90's are being played out or...."have been played out." [Schumpeter carried forward these theories.] Kondratieff and Schumpeter hoped their work would bring attention to the waiting explosion of our times...and spare us the full force of the cycles he discovered. The value of the "K Wave" and other Wave Theories are as guide posts and are excellent as background filters to mark where we might be in the course of time. Some studies believe that many these cyclical patterns were fulfilled in 1987, others that computers have compressed the cyclical actions and/or mitigated much of their power. David Barker in his book "The K-Wave" suggests that; "...will see an expanding economy that will peak with the next primary recession around the year 2030. A drop in farmland prices, commodities, and raw materials along with a peak and decline in interest rates will be the telling signs of the primary peak." [page 297-8] The knowledge of these theories have allowed people like Greenspan to anticipate their "Effects" and lay contingencies to meet their eventualities. Hence the Exchange Stabilization Fund and others like it. In any case the historical proof of "K-Waves is still being determined as we watch today, only history, not the participants may well know for sure what was taking place. I personally believe these cycles have validity and exist, but they cannot predict how participants - at their own time in history - will handle the effects of the cycle at hand. Cycles exist...there effects are open to self-determination. Their existence's are determined, but how and when they play out is unknown. Yes, I do believe that there are fundamental differences in the abilities of today's markets to withstand K-Wave activities. Today's markets are totally different then 1900, 1929 and operate totally differently then in even the 1950's and 60's. The computer with all its derivatives has altered the basic liquidity behind any stock trade. Except for the fundamental reasons to buy or sell a stock.... the landscape is entirely new. It has been the dream of economists to create stabilized financial systems..., those that can be regulated to decrease the frequent imbalances and fluctuations.... the gold standard was such an experiment as was that which replaced it...securitized debt and printing presses. And today, are the economists triumphant with their new mathematical systems...? Good God No....it's still a mess. Yes, I do believe that there will "not be" a major catastrophic economic armageddon that many are anticipating. But, I once did. Yes, we will see serious imbalances in world financial markets and continue to be driven by bubbles and tulip manias, but the systems today are better able to effectively deal with the results of these imbalances. The only scenario that will create the Millennium Crash will be significant and natural geologic disasters...world wide earth quakes, volcanic activity, pole shifts....or a 3rd World War....these will change everything. These fears are very well covered by Evelyn Browning Garriss and Gordon Michael Scallion...they both have web sites. Lets hope they are Wrong. One last note. My father took his masters degree in Economics at Harvard after WWII and studied for a brief time with Schumpeter. One statement I remember from our many conversations was something like this; "There will never be another 1929... the Government has implemented to many safe guards to prevent such an economic implosion." I believe we've seen some of these protections at work over the last 10 years with the S&L's, Indonesia, LTCM, etc. Chip