Return to the 1930s

One of the implications of a Grand Supercycle degree bear market is an infrastructure that crumbles and falls apart over time as funding needed to maintain and build the infrastructure dries up. With rising unemployment and rising interest rates on existing debt, taxpayer dollars are going to dry up very rapidly. With a debt default in the forecast (most likely in 2014), the federal government won't be able to borrow the money to get a jobs program off the ground. The end result is that the infrastructure falls apart.

A write-up on the subject matter on the transportation infrastructure was done, which aims to show the consequence of underinvestment. The write-up is here. There is one issue with the information in the write-up -- namely, the results rely on linear extrapolation, which leads to over-optimistic forecasts at social mood peaks and over-pessimistic forecasts at social mood troughs.

Given that the bulk of "The Great Deflation" is still ahead of us, the infrastructure will in fact fall apart substantially faster than predicted in the write-up.

Since the current bear market is a fourth wave correction (Grand Supercycle wave [IV]), the guideline is that the correction will bring us back to levels associated with the fourth wave of one lesser degree (which would be the previous Supercycle wave (IV)). The fourth wave of one lesser degree is the Great Depression. The implication here is that economic and living conditions on "Main Street" will decline to the level of the 1930s within the next 7 years.

Consider what it means to return to the 1930s as far as the transportation infrastructure is concerned. The bear market will bring back dirt roads. By 2016, maintenance on most roads will stop. Many highways and freeways will simply fall apart and be overrun by grasses and bushes. Streets in the suburbs will become dirt roads. By 2021, the nation's transportation infrastructure will be comparable to what it was in 1932.