A closer look
In the 1920s, Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev made the fatal mistake of doing his job too well. After exhaustively analyzing global markets, he hypothesized the existence of "K-waves"—massive super-cycles of capitalist boom and bust that last roughly fifty years. The problem? His data suggested that Western capitalism was not going to permanently collapse anytime soon, but rather recover and thrive. Joseph Stalin, who desperately wanted an academic excuse to watch the West burn, was distinctly unamused by this objective reality check. For the crime of predicting a robust capitalist rebound, Kondratiev was sent to a gulag and eventually executed.
