A turn date in Martin Armstrong's Economic Confidence Model passed on April 19th or 20th, depending on how many days you use to calculate a year.  The graphic shows that the model is predicting a top at this turn date before heading down into a long-term low in June 2011.  As Martin explains in the essay below, the model does not necessarily mean that a top in the Dow Industrials is at hand.

Why Models Are Our Only Hope?

Should we create a model to manage our social-economy?

In the real world, experience counts as the primary attribute in any field. The question we face in the middle of this economic crisis is simply this: "Is there anyone at the helm who has any experience at all?" Can we disregard gathering the experience of those who have gone before us by constantly re-inventing the wheel for every crisis? Wouldn’t it be nice to have gathered a database so when an economic panic took place, and we tried a particular stimulus, the result was a particular effect. Yet for every economic crisis, we seem to start at the beginning retaining no knowledge or experience from the past assuming in our arrogance that that was then.

It is time to start taking advantage of the collective progress of man that has particularly developed during the last Century. We have not merely landed on the Moon, we have developed sophisticated computers to get us there. We have even conquered many forms of disease, also through the process of scientific learning.

Science has revealed that our greatest form of knowledge comes not from book learning, but from hands-on experience. We have even begun to unravel how the human mind works. Now we understand the difference between "book smart" and "street smart" is based upon the simple fact that when we learn only from study, we do not acquire the deeply seeded and critical knowledge base that our mind constructs through all the senses we refer to as experience. When we actually do something, we use all our senses and construct a knowledge base recording all the little nuances that are not always self-evident as being either important or relevant. I could read every book on brain surgery, but would you like to be my first patient? Just as a medical student might have perfect book scores, they must still then start at a teaching hospital working with those who have actual experience.

The Importance of Experience

What has emerged from the study of the human mind is that it takes practical experience in a field to truly comprehend what to do. There are two broad categories of memory as explained by Eric Jensen in his excellent work, "Teaching with the brain in mind."(ASCO - Assoc for Supervision and curriculum Development (2005)). The two primary types of memories are: (1) "explicit" (clearly formed or defined) that is constructed either learning in a semantic manner (words and pictures) or more episodic (autobiographical or personal experience rather than learning about it second or third hand through books); and (2) "implicit" (implied by indirect means) that includes the reflexive memories and procedural physical or motor type routines like riding a bike, burning your hand, love, and other various experiences. Jensen points out that students that are taught by merely data dumping facts, rarely retain such knowledge id. /pg 132. Jensen pointed out that studies have shown that students who attended class knew only 8% more than those who skipped class. Consequently, this semantic method of knowledge gathering is highly limited. We need something more, to strongly bond within our minds critical knowledge. We need also to invoke the ancient method of apprenticeship of involving other sensory input. It is now understood that episodic memory process "has unlimited capacity" id. /pg 134. This puts flesh on the words "book smart" and "street smart" illustrating that it is highly dangerous to trust the operation of anything to someone who has no real world experience.

Gathering Experience

This is why we need to collect the experiences of mankind and record them to a database that allows human interaction to query "why" events take place and "when" an event should take place, as well as "what" should be the correct response, and "how" should that response be implemented. History repeats because as a society we do not learn for we lack the capacity to acquire real knowledge predicated upon the best possible form of wisdom - experience. If we are afraid to construct a model that incorporates the total global experience of mankind to better manage our society and our economy, then we will be doomed to the insane notion that the economy and our very lives are unpredictable constituting nothing more than a "random walk" like following a drunk down an alley and trying to predict will he bounce-off the wall on the left or right next.

There is no "random walk" through time. Everything is event driven, and history repeats largely due to the fact that given similar events, mankind will react within a set parameter of reactions.  Stick your finger in the flame of a candle and it matters not what culture you are from or the language you speak. You will still pull your finger out of the flame.

Understanding there is a Business Cycle

As I have stated many times, there is always a cycle within everything, and that includes the boom and bust swings within our economy that have caused so much political unrest, that it has fueled even the birth of Communism & effected the lives of mankind throughout recorded history. Economic swings have led to wars when a king’s finances were running low, and caused dreams of utopia that influenced Karl Marx (1818-1883) whose ideas have cost the lives of many millions of people.

Cycles may come in different patterns and are at times driven by a convergence of many individual events each functioning separately according to its own cyclical nature. This is simple the very essence of how everything functions throughout life and the entire universe. It is the cyclical nature of life from the beating rhythm of your heart, the cyclical events of the seasons, weather, movement of planets, to even how artificial gravity is created by the cyclical spin. Even the music we listen to must have a cycle or rhythm. Our social interaction we call our economy, is no different.

What Eric Jensen points out is critical to our understanding of our very ability to learn and advance as individuals. This method of acquiring knowledge applies to us as a society. Jensen explains there are differences between how our brain processes either "verbal or spatial information." When we process written or verbal words in an 8 hour session there was an 80 minutes cycle for cognitive performance while the spatial task of locating points cycled at 96 minutes on average, id./pg. 49.

While there is a genetic foundation for being smart, this accounts only for about half of our intelligence. In fact, part of the brain that deals with discrepancies and is automatically activated when the outcome differs from our expectation.  This is known as the anterior cingulate and is the hard-wiring that enables us to learn from trial and error. Jensen also makes it clear that we learn through social interaction. The case in point is the nut-case who is a loner and becomes the serial killer. Social isolation is devastating to one's health as well, id./pg 95. Even in prisons, solitary confinement absent the social contacts is intended to inflict punishment that is devastating and mentally forces the subject to comply with the demands of the jailer. We are also familiar with the problem of mob behavior that can take the form of peer pressure upon the youths in school or among adults as Communism demanded - turn in your neighbor if he says anything derogatory against the government. These are forms of mental torture imposed by all forms of governments to varying degrees.

To continue reading this long essay go (HERE).  It provides a broad overview of how he built his model and how to interpret its signals.  He also provides thoughts on how government could use the model to better affect policy.   While it doesn't contain any specific predictions, it is a fascinating read.  Once again, I have taken the liberty to edit portions of the essay to make his ideas a bit clearer.

You can also access most of Martin Armstrong's recent essays at Scribd.com.