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Several of the masthead buttons contain basic and preliminary information.
The button which will currently give you information related to Kondratieff himself is "Kondratieff's Life & Work" above in the masthead. This includes Francisco Louçã's excellent mini-biography, "Nikolai Kondratiev and the Early Consensus and Dissensions About History and Statistics", and Kondratieff's seminal US paper of 1935, "The Long Waves in Economic Life".
Suggestions, contributions of papers, bibliographies, links, etc. (personal or otherwise) on the subject of the Long Wave will be greatly appreciated and full attribution as to the source will be given if requested.
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Why the Long Wave down phase is over
Prior to the 1980's there was a reasonably large cadre of economists and investment analysts with a working knowledge of the Kondratieff Long Wave of Economics. The "Golden Age" of growth from 1949 to the mid 1970's was well-understood to be a classic Kondratieff inflationary growth or up phase.
Gross domestic product grew at high rates, as did corporate profits, labor rates, and the civilian labor force. There was, of course, a gradual increase in interest rates, general prices, commodity prices, and stock prices.
In many economic areas and markets during that era, there were still World War Two (or earlier) price controls of various types in place. Few will now remember the interest rate controls on mortgages and savings & loan association rates. But many remember the relatively fixed foreign exchange rates, fixed gold price, and well-controlled crude oil and natural gas prices.
As US growth accelerated in the later 1960's, economic tension arose exactly where those controls existed: interest rates, forex, and oil. The first spike in US interest rates occurred between 1966 and 1969, the stock market stopped rising, gold began to escape control and traded as high as $42 during the Paris Revolution of 1969, and OPEC lowered the boom on oil cartel controls (and institututed its own) in 1973.
All of this was in accordance with both conventional economic ideas of inter-market relatedness and more particularly with the Long Wave of Kondratieff's approximately 27 year economic rising cycle phase.
For many reasons (which deserve a whole volume) a large caste of strident gloom and doomsters were attracted to some of the more superficial aspects of the Long Wave concept. The mood of the time was conflicted due to the Viet Nam War and anti-war actions, political assassinations, wide-spread urban race riots, surging inflation, and the "Great Cultural Revolution" in sexual mores, drug use, music, religion, and politics. The Soviet Union was also still thought to be a major threat in every way.
Instead of the classical theory of Kondratieff which promised reduced growth, lower rates, lower prices, as excess capacity and demand were worked off, the new "Spenglerians" developed a theory that the West was past its peak, world revolution was occurring, and a dismal period of the total liquidation of Western economies was straight ahead. While it is unfair to attribute this to any one group or person, these beliefs were most extreme amongst "gold bugs", and in many ways Robert Prechter of Elliottt Wave International was the "god" of the gloom and doomers for many a year to come.
In the late 1970's and early 1980's, Prechter, who had some familiarity with Kondratieff's work, developed the theory of the "Grand Super Cycle Top" in the US economy and markets. Although Prachter didn't speak of Spengler, the German philosophical "doomster" of "The Decline of the West", many others did. And so the now famous "Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter" cheat card primer of liquidationist economics was born.
Add to this the fact that the US had definitely become a financial economy. The decline from the final inflationary peak of 1980 to the 1982 low was rapid and for analysts living in financial center cities (as most do), the liquidation of the rust belt, agricultural and energy economies wasn't felt personally. The great bull markets in bonds and stocks began in 1981-82 (as they had in 1931-32), and financial centers thrived thereafter. Therefore the novel idea arose that the Kondratieff wave was "on hold" for twenty years, being held up by massive manipulation.
Those in the physical non-financial economy knew different. But the neo-Spenglerian longest Autumn bears didn't remember (or learn) that the same process had occured from 1932-1946: the steady and long bond bull market raised all financial ships.
Both of these charts from EconoMagic demonstrate the economic toll of the Long Wave down phase from the 1970's to current days. Note the peaks in rates of change in the mid 1970's with the double or triple bottoms following in the 1980's to ear;ly 2000's. We have forgotten what real growth is like. But an understanding of Kondratieff's simple work will change that opinion as we head up the inflationary growth slope.
If you have not read Kondratieff's short paper four or five times, click above on Life and Works and follow the instructins to read his brief but crucial report. More will follow in this explantion of Kondratieff at a later date.