In this comprehensive interview that Neil Howe – author of the must-read book The Fourth Turning The Fourth Turning – did with his firm, Saeculum Research, he wastes no time in telling us that he thinks expectations of several more Fed rate raises this year are "delusional," because

"The global economy is in no condition to take this medicine. My very safe prediction is that the Fed will either stall or back down."

As John Mauldin annotates, Neil doesn't stop there. He reminds us that the world geopolitical situation is deteriorating, particularly in the Middle East, and that the US presidential race is a complete crapshoot. At this point, the interviewer chirps in with "You sound a bit more downbeat than most." Well, says Neil,

If I'm coming in beneath the consensus forecast, it's because – over the last decade – reality has been coming in beneath the consensus forecast…

[T]here do arise periods lasting ten years or more when the consensus forecast can veer consistently too high or too low. And over the last decade, it has veered too high. Each year since about 2005, forecasters have been predicting a rise in corporate earnings, in GDP, in inflation, in interest rates—in basically all of the vital growth metrics – that is substantially higher than what subsequently occurred. And I'm talking about every forecaster: the IMF, World Bank, Fed, ECB, OECD, and CBO, along with surveys of business economists…

Systematic overshooting by international institutions is leading some observers to talk about "an in-built 'optimism bias.'"

Which leads the interviewer to quip, "I guess we can't call it the dismal science anymore," and to wonder at the reasons for the chronic boosterism. "Oh, I know why it's happening, says Neil,

The world has fundamentally shifted over the last decade, especially since we've emerged from the Great Recession.We are seeing slower demographic growth, overleveraging, a productivity slowdown, institutional distrust, policy gridlock, and geopolitical drift. But the professional class has been very slow to understand what is going on, not just quantitatively but qualitatively in a new generational configuration that I call the Fourth Turning. They don't accept the new normal. They keep insisting, just two or three years out there on the horizon, that the old normal will return – in GDP growth, in housing starts, in global trade.

But it doesn't return.

Full interview below, via Mauldin Economics' The Big Picture,

January 2016 Report

All signs point to 2016 being a momentous year on every front, from the shuddering global economy to the stormy upcoming election season. How will the world look by year's end? BP interviewed Saeculum Research Founder and President Neil Howe to get his take on what's ahead. (This is an expanded version of the interview we published as a Social Intelligence report on January 6, 2016.)

BP: Neil, 2016 sure began with some big headlines, didn't it?

NH: Yes, the year began with a bang—and not in a good way. Both the Dow and the S&P 500 suffered their worst 5-day and 10-day start to a year in history. With the market down roughly 8%, we are suddenly back to the "correction" lows of late last summer. China's Shanghai market entered free fall, with circuit breakers stopping trading on January 6 after only 29 minutes. Beijing had to intervene massively to keep the CNY from following suit. Meanwhile, most of the Sunni Arab nations abruptly broke off diplomatic relations with Iran. And North Korea successfully tested an H-bomb, which—Dear Leader Kim Jong Un helpfully, if not quite accurately, reminded the media—"is capable of wiping out the whole territory of the U.S. all at once."