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The forecast from At the Crest is still far from reality, but it is starting to come into a view. In addition to the very clear signs of instability in Mideast and Latin America, and the collapse of global trade talks (see Cultural Trends section of this month’s EWFF), Pat Buchanan is stirring up the immigration debate. He’s still a fringe politician, but his bombastic rhetoric is suddenly moving closer to the mainstream (see Additional References below and entries of May 31, May 16, and March 27.

Back in 1996 when Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary, The Elliott Wave Theorist stated that he’d become a “powerhouse” if the market declined. Of course, it didn’t and as the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced past 10,000 and basically stayed there, Buchanan was largely marginalized. But as EWT said in 1996, “He is a depression candidate.” As the Dow moves back toward 10,000, Buchanan (or someone with a similar ability to tap into a deepening vein of American frustration over government, corporate layoffs, immigration and public morals) will quickly become a force to be reckoned with on the political scene.

February 2006, EWFF
Putting the Il back in Illegal Aliens
Another manifestation of a bear market is the attitude toward immigration. First, recall what The Elliott Wave Theorist said on the subject in October 2003: “The U.S. will increase restrictions on immigration.” Last month, over two years after our forecast, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “toughest immigration legislation in more than a decade.” The bill includes “provisions that once seemed unthinkable to many lawmakers, like the construction of five fences across 698 miles of the United States border with Mexico.” As EWT has noted, in bear markets, “people build walls and fences to shut out those perceived to be different.” Tom Tancredo, the Colorado Congressman behind the fence idea (he also wants to add one along the border with Canada), marvels at his sudden move into the mainstream. “I would have said to you a month ago or so, ‘Yeah, it’s definitely the case that I am a pariah.’ But it has changed. I’m respected. It leaves me speechless.” It was only last summer that Business Week’s cover story on “Embracing Illegals” stated that companies “are getting hooked on the buying power of 11 million undocumented immigrants.” “Let’s be real: the U.S. is not about to arrest and herd millions of men, women and children into boxcars for transport back across the Rio Grande,” said an editorial in the same issue. “That’s a nativist’s fantasy that will never come to pass.” But we caution such editorialists that in a major bear market, nativist and other fantasies of exclusion typically become stark reality. And the brunt of this bear market is still to come.