Downcycle

Nike set up a "Reuse-a-Shoe" program to "downcycle" old sneakers. The outsole rubber and midsole foam from used shoes are converted into surface material for running tracks and other athletic facilities and playgrounds. The fabric from the shoe uppers becomes padding under carpets.

Because commodity industries, including energy, are driven by costs, a pricing down-cycle brings major cost cutting efforts, often involving restructurings and consolidations to increase economies of scale.

It is precisely these logical anomalies, paradoxes and problems, which create Samsara's wheel of eternal repeating up-cycles which is followed by eternal repeating down-cycles and vice versa (for example life and death, success and fiasco, joy and sorrow) – as well as the ignorance and suffering when you are caught into this wheel, for example in the experience of nightmare and anxiety.

[M]ost experts agree that a downcycle is in progress and are expecting demand from emerging countries and regions such as India, South-East Asia and even Africa, to eventually rebound to the point where it once again outstrips supply.

Again, the current down cycle is anomalous, with the Fed's monetary policies encouraging unusually high levels of stock buybacks and fruitless mergers.