[drgoodword]

I am continually amazed at public and government reactions to the current economic crisis that has been ongoing since the start of the U.S. housing market collapse in 2007. If we can put Peak Oil factors slightly to the side for just a moment (and I know some here will object to an oil-free analysis of this recession/depression), the current crisis is, imo, an absolutely text-book example of a Kondratiev winter. And as Kondratiev predicts, the response of governments to such a crisis is to add more debt to the bad debt until the whole thing collapses and a full-blown depression painfully excises the bad debt, allowing for a fresh start in a Kondratiev spring.

I know it's unwise to view the crisis solely through the century-old theories of a semi-obscure economist,but Kondratiev really seems to have provided a prescient model of a (semi) free-market's cycles. I think Kondratiev would have had a good chuckle at the history-repeats-itself quixotic efforts of western governments and central banks to put our the bad-debt fire with more-debt gasoline.

[Daniel_Plainview]

If it's true that we're in the midst of a Kondratiev winter, then the question becomes: is it possible for central bankers to bypass the K-Winter by massively printing unprecedented amounts of money? Or is the Kondratiev winter an immutable law of economics, such that any efforts by the central bankers will be in vain (or make matters worse), and we will ineluctably head into an epic deflationary depression irrespective of debt monetization and money printing? Does Kondratiev theory address the effects of massive, large-scale money printing upon a K-winter's deflationary spiral?

Here's one commentator's belief:

It Ain't Gonna Work
By Tim W Wood CPA, October 3, 2008

By every historical measure the equity markets slipped into a secular bear market in 2000. As a result, we began to see efforts by the powers that be to keep the market afloat. I have stated all along that manipulation will ultimately not work. I have also stated all along that all this will do is make matters worse in the end. Well, I would think that everyone can now see, matters are indeed much worse. Yet, the Fed, the Treasury and the politicians continue to think that they can “fix” the problem by throwing more money at it. They do not understand that they can’t “fix” this economic crisis. They also do not understand that it is their trying to “fix” things in the past that has created the current situation. All markets as well as the economy must both inhale and exhale. They are trying to prevent the exhaling and it ain’t gonna work.

What we are dealing with is the wrath of Kondratieff Winter, which is about the purging of excess credit. Along with that comes deflation and along with that global stock markets enter into extended declines. Real estate declines, economic growth slows, commodities decline, bankruptcies accelerate as the excess credit is purged from the system, the banking system is shaken, the free market is blamed and we move toward national fascist political tendencies. We are now seeing each and every one of these symptoms of K-wave winter. For the record, I did not make up these symptoms to fit the current situation. I have original writings by Nikolai D. Kondratieff and the signs of K-wave winter were quoted from a book by David Knox Barker titled, The K-wave and was published in 1995. Don’t think the powers that be aren’t aware of Kondratieff Winter. They know full well what we are facing and that is why they have tried to hold back its wrath as diligently as they have since 2001. ...

[eXpat]

To the question, where are we in the winter cicle, this is what William R. Thompson have to say:

Based on Professor Thompson's analysis long K cycles have nearly a thousand years of supporting evidence. If we accept the fact that most winters in K cycles last 20 years (as outlined in the chart above) this would indicate that we are about halfway through the Kondratieff winter that commenced in the year 2000. Thus in all probability we will be moving from a "recession" to a "depression" phase in the cycle about the year 2013 and it should last until approximately 2017-2020.

http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/christopher-quigley/kondratieff-waves-and-the-greater-depression-of-2013-2020
If we throw in the equation, the effects of PO after 2020, future is not very bright...