The ewave sites are sorting out this wave 2. The rise has gone most of the way already, and so it could be short lived, but given the length of wave 1, typically this would go for 5+ weeks. Maybe it already has. Earlier, Yelnick had thought wave 1 down had ended on Feb 13; arguably it did, and we have been in a war-driven wave 2 ever since. Next week will be its fifth week. How high may it go? It is high enough now to satisfy wave principles, right between Dow8150, the '4th of the 3d', a typical level, and Dow8230, the 50% retracement level. Wave C = A at around Dow8300. But this may go to the fibonacci 61.8% retracement level, which from Mar12 would be Dow8420, and from Feb13 a bit higher.
The pundits are sorting out who won/loss in the recent turn of events. Last night Strobe Talbott talked at Berkeley. (The event was well timed given Bush's speech, but was surprisingly lackluster and uninformative.) Strobe is a controversial figure. He was a Time reporter on Soviet affairs for many years, and the Russian Deputy Secy of State under Clinton. He was often vilified for letting Russia rot during the later Yeltsin years. Strobe has impeccable Dove credentials, and yet he admitted to the Berkeley audience last night that he is for the war, just not for how we got to this point. He concern is that if the war is short and sweet, it might further embolden the New Unilateralists the dismantle the post-war institutions like the UN and NATO. He would prefer to see an olive branch given to even the French after we win.
The WSJ ran an intriguing op-ed piece on the last time the French were in control - after the US pulled out of the League of Nations following WWI. The French squeezed the Germans on reparations, and their leadership laid the groundwork for WWII and 50 million casualties. Not an auspicious beginning.
Now the pundits are fighting back against the French. A view is developing that if Germany had a stronger leader, he/she would have countered he French and found a compromise. The intractability of the French position squelched an Arab League meeting that is rumored to have pushed for Saddam to abdicate. Indeed, it could be said that France's uncompromising position may lead to the splintering of the post-war world. It has shown the unreliability of the UN, the unworkability of the UN security Council, and the irrelevance of NATO in a post-Soviet world. So the French, and not the New Unilaterists, are now being blamed for the destruction of the post-war institutions.
The wave 2 social mood is a belief the Bull is back. This leads to a sense of inclusiveness, multilaterism, and love of all things French. Some of that is beginning to occur, as pundits pine for the old world of multinational cooperation & argue for being gracious on winning the war by mending recent slights and disagreements. When the mood breaks in wave 3 down, we will swing to the opposite camp, and the New Unilaterists will hold sway. Assuming the war is short - and everyone in their Wave 2 mood seems to believe this - the post-war mess may be something to behold. Then we will see if a true leader can emerge, a politician with the courage shown by Tony Blair as he committed political suicide over the past few weeks, a leader to counter the Wave 3 mood down.
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