This is what a long economic winter feels like

Ilya Naymushin/Reuters Leave it to an economist living in communist Russia to find a pattern in capitalist countries’ economies – a pattern that paints a chilling picture for the global economy over the next few years. In the 1920s, Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev (also spelled Kondratieff) developed a theory that prices, interest rates, foreign trade and coal and pig iron production in capitalist countries moved in long waves of 50-60 years. This meant that “great depressions” were...