Bears

I was walking through Hollywood and Highland and discovered that the Build-a-Bear had been closed. Must have been pretty recent: They had a promotion in September's Hollywood and Highland newsletter.

Build-a-Bear! In a place that gets foot traffic like....like Hollywood and Highland!

I am, like Scrooge, starting to doubt my senses: there is no mention anywhere of them closing stores, having significant trouble, or anything about this particular location. And considering the customization done for this particular store - including Marilyn Monroe and James Dean bear statues overlooking Hollywood Boulevard - there must have been some pressure to keep it going. Maybe it just moved.

Not that it ever had any business. The store was completely empty almost any time I walked by. Only rarely did I ever see tourists carrying the oversized boxes containing bears or beagles or whatever.

And what do you expect: Cool as customization and proper names and little hearts are, teddy bears need to be furry and should be cute and...that's about it. It's very much a top-of-the-pyramid business, and will naturally be the first to disappear if less money is flowing through a particular area.

"Horrible"

Consumer Confidence Tops Expectations by Being Merely Horrible, Partially Explaining Black Friday Bloodlust

This seemed like a real Welcome to the Crisis article: The reporting of bad news in a manner halfway between cynical and bemused; the Thoreau quote for dramatic emphasis; the photograph that might have been people running from a mad gunman as easily as the shopping frenzy it actually was.

In the Crisis, any potential advantage is exploited as fully as possible. Not that people will be less moral - some may be, of course - but that the smallest savings or the most meager bonus becomes more important than it was a few years before. Or, if that isn't always the case, our vigilance for such activity and action makes any visible evidence of it of interest - a funhouse mirror held up to our own souls.

Occupy

They're supposed to be clearing out the Occupy L.A. folks today. It has always felt like our Bonus Army moment. I don't recall any lasting impact that the Bonus Army had, except perhaps for a stronger Veteran's Administration after WWII. If so, perhaps here we can expect a more comprehensive regulatory regime to come about in the First Turning, maybe including Too Big To Fail laws and changes in corporate personhood. Perhaps even sooner than that.

Although the resilience of the American economy as the Eurozone goes through convulsions is surprising. I've been keeping track of mortgage rates which continue to go down and stay down. That's largely because U.S. government securities keep dropping in yield, because THEY are a safe haven!

If everyone's bond rating drops, does it matter whether I'm AAA if nobody else is better than AA?

Welcome!

Let's start with the easy stuff first: "The Crisis" is the one predicted by William Strauss and Neil Howe, originally in their 1991 book "Generations." Looking at the last 400 years or so of American and English history, they noted (as others had before them) that periods of upheaval occurred roughly every 90 years. The theory of history they put together also gave a mechanism explaining this recurrence as being one of a cycle of four "turnings," each of which lasts just over 20 years. They expected the next upheaval to begin soon after the turn of the century, and gave 2005 as a likely starting point.

As the new century began, there was no lack of possible starting points for the Crisis. The fears of Y2K bugs causing a meltdown of civilization didn't materialize, but within a few months there was the popping of the dot-com bubble followed by the acrimonious 2000 presidential election. The September 11 attacks gave all indications of being just the sort of catalyst Strauss and Howe predicted....but the authors' internet postings soon after indicated that they thought the timing was not in line with their theory. In the year 2005, Hurricane Katrina fit both the predicted timing and the expected public impact, although it seemed more of a local event than one affecting the entire country. With the financial crisis of fall 2008, though, that it became clear that something had definitely changed. People who discuss this theory on the Fourth Turning website stopped asking IF the Crisis had begun, and instead started asking WHEN.

And that's where I am, here. I wanted a place to post my thoughts on where we are, where we're going, and what's next. Having accepted that the Crisis has started, I'll mention my thoughts on the WHEN, and what they imply for the future.   I may look forward to the period following the Crisis (the "High" or "First Turning") or even later than that.  Most of the time, though, I expect that I'll post a few sentences  observing what is going on in the world within this Strauss & Howe context. Since their theory is cyclical, there will probably be some comparisons with past turnings ("High School Musical" is Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland Let's-Put-On-a-Show redux!) and some predictions about what's next.

Maybe it'll be interesting....