Many Physicists assume TIME to come from Einstein’s space-time geometry. Space-time is at the heart of string theory, which is connected to supersymmetry and which leads us to HIGGS, the Goddamn particle rechristened as ‘The God particle’. The particle we have almost found.
Did it occur to the physicists (ok! not all of them) that what if the assumption of TIME being the fourth dimension was wrong? A few of them have written, “Was Einstein wrong?” Tim Maudlin’s book (1994) on Quantum nonlocality and relativity say that the special theory of relativity claim about the geometric structure of space and time is incorrect. What if 3D TIME equaled 3D space? What if the symmetry we are seeking among subatomic particles also existed in TIME?
The symmetry of time means there is a moment when time symmetry starts and time when the symmetry completes before starting again. We first wrote about these repetitions, entropy, and questions in June 2009 (Space and Time). Now when the physicists are still divided, Stephen Hawking continues to consider time as imaginary and we are still almost reaching HIGGS, it would be interesting to see when the term cycle was coined and where have we reached in our cycle (TIME) theory of everything.
Crisis and depression have been regarded as successive stages of an extended period, to which the name cycle has been given, and which embraces all the varying conditions from the highest degree of prosperity to the lowest point of depression. The word cycle, with this general meaning, was used by William Petty as early as the year 1662. Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi (1819) introduced the notion of the economy periodically cycling between two phases. Charles Dunoyer (1849) improved on Sismondi’s work and introduced the notion of cycling between two phases and gave one of the earliest theories of the economic cycle. Dunoyer is primarily cited as a substitute for Adam Smith.
Hyde Clarke, an English statistician (1847) developed the early analysis of cycles further. The theory was advanced by John Mills (1867). He said, “Business cycles are essentially credit cycles which are determined by the rates, confidence and the mental mood of the businessmen.”
‘Benner’s Prophecies – Future up and down in prices’ was written in 1875. Samuel Benner was a prosperous farmer wiped out financially by the 1873 panic. He turned to wheat farming in Ohio and took up the statistical study of price movements as a hobby to find, if possible, the answers to the recurring ups and downs in business. He noted that highs of the business tend to follow a repeating 8-9-10 yearly pattern. With respect to economic low points, he noted two series of time sequences indicating that recessions (bad times) and depressions (panics) tend to alternate. The panic years reflect a repeating 16-18-20 pattern.
We tested the Benner cycles for Dow 30 (from 1929), Sensex 30 (From 1990), Brazil and China. The Benner clock timed all the lows and highs on the respective indices. Benner suggested a top in 2010 (happened) and a slowdown and low in 2011 (happened). Barring Reliance all the other Sensex 30 stocks are still above December 2011 lows. Benner’s cycle foresees prosperity ahead into 2019 and then depression in 2021. Markets have an innate ability to surprise. We won’t bet against Benner’s TIME symmetry.
After Benner, it was Schumpeter, an Austrian-Hungarian-American economist, and political scientist. He popularized the term “creative destruction” in economics and attempted the cycle theory of everything, but more about that later.