The Major 172 Year Cycle Spells Depression

The 172 year cycle is one of the more important ones. Historically, it’s associated with financial collapse, colder climate, civil wars, social unrest, and epidemics. This cycle topped in 2007, along with the market.

We’re also at the end of an even larger 516 year cycle (a climate cycle, which also has implications for major societal changes).

For example, since 1998, the climate on Earth has been cooling. And yet the United Nations is yelling from the rooftops that the world is going to burn up. However, governments (and associated bodies) are always last in to an idea—the operate on consensus of the herd. This horse has left the barn long ago.

This idea of man-made global warming becomes very hard to swallow when you realize it was warmer on Earth during the Medieval Period and that the current climate scenario was forecast by Dr. Raymond Wheeler decades ago. In fact, since 1998, the Earth’s climate has been cooling off and it has certainly becoming drier.

Dr. Wheeler writes in his book, Climate: The Key to Understanding Business Cycles (With a Forecast of Trends Into the Twenty-First Century),

“The cold phases of the cycle are dominated by various kinds of civil strike—civil wars, class struggles between rich and poor and between conservatives and liberals, religious wares, democratic reforms, emancipations, broadening of the franchise, colonization, migration, and piracy.”

To that end, Dr. Wheeler developed the “Drought Clock,” a forecasting tool that predicted a turn cooler around the year 2000.

But let’s thumb back through a list of most recent 172 year cycles to get an idea of their regularity and similarities across the board. I’m assuming the top of this latest 172 cycle to be the year 2007, the top of the US stock market (or beginning of the “Great Recession”).

1835

The largest depression of the 19th century – beginning in May, 1935, which became the longest and deepest bear market in US history to that point. It’s referred to as the “Great Repudiation Depression.” It was also very cold and dry (You can click on the chart at left to enlarge it).Wheat prices topped in 1807 (one 19 year panic cycle early). In 1834, climate turned suddenly dry and a large depression began. There was a brief respite as it suddenly became wetter the next year, but dryness set in again and “The Panic of 1837” began.Banks collapsed, businesses failed, prices declined, and thousands of workers lost their jobs. Unemployment may have been as high as 25% in some locales.

1663

If you go back a further 172 years, you hit a major depression in England, followed by the Blubonic Plague in 1664 (one year later), and the Great Fire of London one year after that (1665), which burned the city almost to the ground.It began an 89 year bear market and was very cold and dry – the Little Ice Age they called it. It began 25 years of deflation and was the most severe depression in 500 years. But then, this also marked the larger 516 climate year cycle end.

1491

172 years earlier. This depression hit about 8 years later than scheduled. However, the bear market lasted 20 years. You can see by the climate chart to the left that it became cold and dry.In China, rice prices peaked in 1498 after a 50 year rise in prices. A twenty year bear market followed. Historians have estimated that beginning from early 1500, in only 50 years the population of Peru and Mexico fell from 60 to 10 million; in the latter country, in one century, the populations fell from an initial 10 million to only 2 million. The plague was the culprit.The great epidemic of 1499-1500, in London and apparently also in the country opened the sixteen century— ‘a great pestilence throughout all England’. In newly found America, smallpox all but decimate the Native American population beginning about 1500.

1320
	1280 to 1305 was cold and dry and the relative dryness lasted through about 1330. This period is made difficult by a 100 year absense of data, but we do know that the Black Death raged from 1347 – 1453 and killed one third of Europeans.Wheat prices peaked in 1316.The low came 23 years later, in 1339. Prices bumped along the low for another 131 years.

1148

This cold period was of an unusually long period (1135-1185). There were lots of civil wars raging (a long civil war in Scotland, in France, communes repeatedly revolted against the aristocracy, Swedes fought the Finns, etc.)In China, there was a peak in the price of rice around 1128 (approximately one 19 year cycle early) and this began a 100 year deflation.This cycle coincided with a larger 516 year climate cycle.

2007

The chart on the left comes from the site of Christopher Monckton, who speaks around the world on Climate Warming (debunking it). Similar charts are readily available on scientific sites across the web. The pattern is not under dispute.The change in climate preceded the top of the market by approximately seven years (6.3 years is a less harmonic cycle).We’re expecting an even bigger financial crash to start to take hold this year (about 7 years past the top in 2007) and, in fact, the markets are heading down as I write this.Civil wars rage around the world, people are killing each other, and Ebola (which has been around for decades) has suddenly sprung up with the decline in social mood.The pattern is once again exerting itself.

Are you seeing a pattern here? I hope so.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Quite the opposite. It’s a huge opportunity. Tremendous fortunes have been made in times of financial hardship. Look at the 1930s. Many families that are well-known in the upper echelons of society today made their fortunes during those very tough years and the years that followed.

The danger is not paying attention to the cycle we’re in—not getting prepared to be financially resilient. There are many who will pay no attention and end up in ruin. The smart ones will persevere, find new avenues to excel in, or hunker down and make their present situation indestructible.