Time magazine’s cover story this week posed a simple question, “Is Steve Bannon the Second Most Powerful Man in the World?” In case you didn't already know, Bannon is President Trump’s controversial Chief Strategist who, among other things, co-authored the 45th President’s Inauguration Day speech.
Time recounts a story of a party guest who overheard Bannon say that he was like communist revolutionary and Soviet leader Lenin, eager to “bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today's Establishment.”
Bannon was also “captivated” by a book called The Fourth Turning written by Hedgeye Demography Sector Head Neil Howe and the late generational theorist William Strauss.
As Time writes:
“The book argues that American history can be described in a four-phase cycle, repeated again and again in which successive generations have fallen into crisis, embraced institutions, rebelled against those institutions and forgotten the lessons of the past--which invites the next crisis.… During the fourth turning of the phase, institutions are destroyed and rebuilt.”
In the exclusive video above, Neil Howe and Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough discuss the current political climate stoked by Bannon and Trump, how that could affect markets and more.
As Howe points out, every two-term U.S. president since 1900 has come into office with a recession directly before, while or within a few quarters of taking office. Given the Bannon/Trump worldview, Howe thinks:
“Trump would glory in a bear market in his first year in office. He would have fun with it, saying 'This bear market is the feeling of corruption leaving the body.' And what gains, the GOP leadership’s high and dry Tory libertarianism or Steve Bannon’s populist fury? Who wins on that exchange with every tick down in the Dow? I think it’s clear. Trump wins.”
For more, listen to the complete discussion between Howe and McCullough above.
