On the cusp of a paradigm shift. Or pseudo default.

"History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes."

–?Mark Twain.

And what is history? History is a sequence of intertwined events which follow each other based on cause-and-effect relationships.

Everyone knows the spiritual word of Buddhism and Hinduism, Karma.

The common sayings "what goes around comes around" and "what you sow is what you reap" are great examples of how Karma works.

It turns out that, in the Universe, every system has its own Karma, just like the Universe itself. Everything in it consists of an infinite number of such systems which evolve, elaborate and develop according to various laws of the Universe.

What we call knowledge here on Earth is just an experience, and it's already past; it's obsolete. But knowledge gives you the ground for the discoveries, a torch and light for the paths you have never stepped.

That is what the great thinker Socrates meant by saying, "The only thing I know is that I know nothing, and I am not quite sure that I know that."

What we see is from our personal perspective. No one exactly knows the future. By the time the centuries will have passed, our descendants will call our times - the Middle Ages.

Though from the past, we can gather and learn patterns of each system's development. So, our guessing occurs to be more accurate and authentic.

Back to business, the world economy is a science of people's behaviour. It is a complex system that has its own Karma or evolution story. But its patterns always resemble each other in time, and we call it economic cycles.

That particular one we are passing by has numerous similarities with the beginning of the 20th century, especially the interval before WWII.

After WWI, in attempts to restore pre-war financial order, the powers got back to financial capitalism, a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was controlled in a feudalist fashion by the world central banks acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.

Financial capitalism did not place emphasis on the exchange of goods or the production of goods as commercial or industrial capitalism did.

Financial capitalism was concerned entirely with claims on wealth—stocks, bonds, mortgages, deposits, interest rates, etc.

It invested capital not because it desired to increase the output of goods or services but because it wanted to sell securities. But, incidentally, it increased the production and transportation of goods.?

Corporations were built upon corporations in the holding companies form, so the securities were issued in huge quantities, bringing profitable fees and commissions to financial capitalists without any economic production increase.

Financial control could be exercised only imperfectly through credit control and interlocking directorates. To strengthen such authority, some measure of stock ownership was necessary. But stock ownership was dangerous to banks because their funds consisted more of deposits (a short-term debt) than of capital (a long-term debt). This meant that banks which sought economic control through stock ownership were putting short-term into long-term holdings. This was safe only so long as these latter could be liquidated rapidly at a price high enough to pay short-term obligations as they presented themselves.

Credit was diverted from production to speculation, and increasing amounts of funds were being drained from the economic system into the stock market, where they circulated around and around, building up the prices of securities.

After the economic depression and eclipse of financial capitalism, banks were reduced from the masters of the economy to become its servant in a situation where the principal economic decisions would not be based on the money supply but on the supply and organisation of real resources.

So, now I assume you have already spotted the pattern.

The current conditions do not vary much from those listed above. We are undergoing another existential crisis of the financial system leading to the Fifth Industrial Revolution owing to AI development and the digitalisation of everything.

The existing economic order is dying. The US government no more can finances itself by selling new bond issuances to the world because of the dollar's shaken ground and lack of demand from the international community.

The US debt ceiling deal has been struck on conditions of "historic reductions in spending" - $50 billion with a debt increase of $4 trillion in the next two years. Just a year ago, the Fed printed twice as much as that "historic reduction" each month. Another striking point of that agreement is that after 2025, the Debt Ceiling term will become obsolete.

Hit the road, Jay! To finance that insatiable need, the Fed will have to set off on a printing spree and launch another QE in order to fund the ravenous Government. It will lead to the "Weimarization" of the economy - more inflation and commodity price and other currencies appreciation concerning the dollar.

Moreover, it should be noted that the potential demand for commodities for the development of AI is enormous.

All the tasks machines perform are transactions between memory and processors, and each of these transactions requires energy. As these tasks become more elaborate and data-intensive, two things begin to scale up exponentially: the need for more memory storage and more energy necessity.

If we continue to scale data at this rate, pretty soon, we will hit a wall where our silicon supply chains won't be able to keep up with the amount of data being generated.

Couple this with the fact that in 2018 our computers consumed roughly 1-2% of the global electricity supply, and in 2020 this figure was estimated to be around 4–6%. If we continue at this rate, it's projected to rise 8-21% by 2030, further exacerbating the current energy crisis.

Decades of underinvestment will surely bring substantial price spikes in such commodities as agriculture products, oil, copper, cobalt, silicon, zinc and other rare earth metals. Add to this process of de-globalisation, geopolitical turmoils, and economic de-centralisation, not to mention additional demand from the military industry at the expense of the civil.

All these factors will influence our everyday life over the next century. All these are the factors which we can't ignore in business forecasting. As Herodotus used to say - "Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances".

Reflecting on all of the above, keep in mind that even the most solid theories will fail at some point because?every conclusion drawn from our observation is, as a rule, premature, for behind the phenomena which we see are other phenomena that we see indistinctly, and perhaps behind this latter, yet others which we do not see at all.

So, the best managerial advice for all times is to parachute straight into the situation and handle it!