THE WIZARD WILL GIVE ME A BRAIN
Washington DC will be renamed Wizard Cocksucker Burg.
Will this be the year that Killer Bees finally invade America?
I am hoping for another run-up on the price of oil, but it probably won't happen until summer.
I am also hoping that President Obama carefully disentangles us from Georgia, but again, I don't expect to hear any good news on that front for awhile.
I will start, and finish, my dissertation.
God, it would be awesome if Ahmadinejad lost the 2009 elections. I'll go ahead and predict that, then.
There will be at least one typo in ben's completed dissertation, which he won't notice until the dissertation has already been printed, bound and defended. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
And there will be further wailing and gnashing of teeth.
I will feel confident and upbeat about my business/career, only to have it flop.
Again.
During the harsh winter we will be forced to eat our musicians, and there will be much rejoicing.
Also, I will hardly get laid at all.
Ogged won't come back, but BPL will become a front page poster.
The Pirates will suck.
JRoth will continue to follow the Pirates, getting excited every time they fail to suck, and getting disappointed every time they suck (which, to be clear, will be most of the time).
AB will wonder aloud why JRoth puts himself through this.
It will pretty much suck like this year, only with a better President.
6: Doubtful--and even if he did, that'd still leave us with Mississippi, Alabama, etc.
Ditto 16, except for Pirates, read Orioles.
It will pretty much suck like this year, only with a better President.
It will pretty much suck like this year, only with a thinner, taller, blacker version of this year's president.
Thinner + taller + blacker = better! It is possible that there will be some differences besides the physical.
The housing market will decline another 10%. Unemployment will rise to 10%, which will scare the shit out of the employers who will promptly lay off more workers, bringing unemployment to 12%. Someone will take a potshot at Obama, and the Dow will lose another 1000.
The Taliban will have another spring offensive, which will convince NATO that the situation is hopeless. The US will add more combat brigades to the region. Pakistan and India will rattle sabers, but not launch.
China will experience negative GDP for the first time in years, freaking everyone out. Riots in China will be reported on the internet only.
The Titans will win the Super Bowl, the Angels will win the World Series and the Celtics will repeat as NBA champs.
(1) I will get laid more than Di but less than Ben.
(2) AhmaDinnerJacket will lose the election in Iran.
(3) I will have a huge fight with the ex-wife over final resolution of community property issues.
(4) Obama will deliver on at least one major progressive policy issue but lefty bloggers will bitch like whiny ass titty babies anyway.
(5) I will find myself attracted to someone with long-term potential but will sabotage things out of fear.
(6) Harry Reid will be the most disappointing Democratic Senate leader in living memory.
(7) I will learn to really cook rather than just make food.
Also, I will hardly get laid at all.
I will get laid off.
The economy will at least start to thaw and things will look like they're getting back to normal. "Great Depression II" will wind up looking a little weak in comparison to the real thing. The Left will try to point out that, see, government intervention is a good thing, that this wouldn't have been survived without the lessons of FDR, etc., and they will be almost entirely drowned out by talking sphincters on the right who will say Bush should get the credit for bravery in the face of doubt or some such and that it's not like Obama's been in office long enough to do anything, so nyah, and nobody will care because they'll be too busy finally settling on a lower-than-desired-but-finally-some-traction offer on the house they've been trying to sell for two years.
Calls to regulate the financial industry will fall on deaf ears in both parties.
Obama will be swamped with flag-pin-level complaints from the right. His approval ratings will remain absurdly high in comparison to Bush's regardless.
Every time Obama's approval ratings dip below Bill Clinton's, someone on Fox News will make a dire prediction.
At least one person on one of the tickets on the 2008 presidential ballot will have a major health crisis that will give the media an opportunity to sit around second-guessing what would have happened if the same thing had occurred, say, the last week of October. It won't at all be relevant but the media will demonstrate that it is incapable of letting go of its love for this particular electoral cycle.
A state government will act to legalize same-sex marriage without that state's judicial system at all being involved. It will largely be seen as the writing on the wall that the fight is all over save the shouting, with general agreement that it will be more or less universal in thirty years. The religious right will be in such a frenzy that they'll spook their fiscally conservative, socially agnostic allies and further weaken the Republican Party but increase how intimidated their targets feel in day-to-day life. All but neutered, politically, the farthest fringe of the religious right will lash out and hate crimes will tick upwards in a statistically significant but not exactly blood-in-the-streets kind of way. The media will have no idea what to do with a high-profile murder-suicide by someone who sees her/himself as a martyr for the social-conservative cause.
There will be peace in the middle east, a cure for cancer, and young men everywhere will pull their pants up.
The media will have no idea what to do with a high-profile murder-suicide by someone who sees her/himself as a martyr for the social-conservative cause.
Haven't we seen a number of these already? Okay, not exactly "high-profile," but a lot of those shooting rampages seem to have an organized profile that reminds me a good deal of the social conservative blog-ranters---that Santa-suit guy rampaging at his ex-wife and her family, for example.
I'm pretty far out on that limb already, aren't I. Okay, never mind.
January: Al Franken will join the US Senate, but only after GOP attempts to obstruct his seating through parliamentary manoever lead the evening news broadcasts for two consecutive days. In the end, Majority Leader Reid grants the GOP valuable concessions on floor rules for the remainder of the term.
February: A shooting war breaks out between India and Pakistan, with airstrikes followed by small-scale infantry incursions into one another's territory. Fortunately, the conflict is contained before it escalates to a nuclear exchange. This time.
The Employee Free Choice Act fails in the Senate.
March: Chrysler files for bankruptcy protection. Management's plan of reorganization is subsequently contested by a stunning alliance of the UAW and a Korean auto manufacturer.
April: Rush Limbaugh unexpectedly dies of a heart attack. Instapundit links to a wild conspiracy theory with a vague "Hmmmm." An ugly probate fight breaks out among contenders to his inheritance, during which allegations of sexual abuse of minors are made.
May: Angela Merkl rashly calls for a confidence vote in her government, which she loses thanks to defections among right-wing factions in her parliamentary coalition. The subsequent election yields the feared result that no numerical majority is possible without either a grand coalition or the support of the Left party. The SPD forms a minority government with the tacit support of the Left party. The Euro falls to its lowest level against the dollar since 2000.
Obama's comprehensive health care plan is signed into law. It does not contain a formal individual mandate, but its provisions are designed to achieve a de facto individual mandate.
June: There is an amateurish, and fortunately failed attempt on the life of Barack Obama. The right-wing blogosphere goes batshit over television images of SoS Hillary Clinton wearing a modest veil during a visit to Yemen.
July: An accounting scandal emerges at a major Italian bank. The Italian financial sector implodes, taking down several European banks and triggering violent demonstrations across Italy. Instapundit links to several stories about a synagogue being defaced in the course of the rioting.
August: A tell-all memoir by a member of the Bush administration reveals that George W. Bush personally authorized the torture of suspected terrorists. The memoirist quotes him as saying, "Squeeze their nuts till they cry, do whatever the fuck you have to do. Do you understand me?" The memoir also claims that Bush reacted to the revelations about Abu Ghraib by saying, "Don't those hillbillies have any fucking common sense? You don't take pictures of shit like that!"
September: Severe tornadoes strike Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. A declaration of emergency and a tornado relief bill quickly follow. Sen. Blanche Lincoln unexpectedly changes her stance on the EFCA, which then passes the Senate. No causal connection is ever conclusively shown, but tongues wag.
October: A South Korean tabloid reports that Kim Jong Il, who has not been seen in public in months, is dead. The North Koreans promptly release footage of a recent appearance, but Western newspapers, citing confidential intelligence sources, say that the man in the video is a body double. Speculation reaches furious levels when a series of conflicting statements attributed to Kim--some of them bellicose, some of the conciliatory--reach South Korea and China through diplomatic channels.
November: Barack Obama parts from tradition when he pointedly declines to pardon the organic, free-range heritage breed turkey that has been supplied for the White House Thanksgiving dinner. Instead, he issues a long list of clemency orders for inmates serving life sentences for minor drug crimes.
December: The blogger known as "ogged" announces he is engaged. Di Kotimy reveals that she is in a serious relationship with her new beau, a federal judge. John Emerson has a successful hernia surgery, whereupon his disposition becomes startlingly milder. At the behest of his wife and family physician, and with the help of Wellbutrin, the Apostropher gives up smoking. LizardBreath is depicted in a photo on the front page of the NYT metro section; her blogging activities are not remarked upon. Po-Mo Polymath briefly becomes a news celebrity when he knees John Yoo in the crotch after a lecture in Chicago. Po-Mo loses his job in the aftermath of his arrest for assault, but Yoo declines to press charges, and PMP gets a job as a staffer for Rachel Maddow. Instapundit links to the story as proof of the violent tendencies of the contemporary Left.
Fleet Foxes will release a follow-up album that no one cares too much about, so it will just end up on "most underrated" lists at the end of the year.
Joker will release a full-length debut that absolutely destroys, but people in America won't hear about it until Kanye West raps over "Snake Eater" sometime in 2010.
Lil' Wayne will release 13 mixtapes featuring 25 amazing songs, and indie music critics will finally give up on trying to follow it all because the Clipse will have released their third full-length, thus fulfilling the "one credible semi-mainstream rapper can be loved by all US music critics at a time" rule.
Millions of college students across the US will explain to their friends how they've just heard about this amazing new singer named M.I.A.
US stock markets will take a bit more of a hit (another 10-25%), but ultimately recover to a higher level by the end of the year. A huge number of investment advisors will continue to suggest staying in cash until the markets have accomplished that recovery. More sophisticated advisors will continue to harp on the superior risk-adjusted opportunities in fixed income, while ignoring that most investors have no great way to take on sufficient leverage to make the narrowing credit spread bets as profitable as long equity bets. This annoyance will continue until the credit markets move back closer to normal (let's say... around April-May? Though this last bit is completely ex recto.).
The Bears will continue to be pulled up toward mediocrity by a clutch defense and excellent special teams play.
It is possible that there will be some differences besides the physical.
It's possible, but at this point largely hypothetical.
December: The blogger known as "ogged" announces he is gay; no one notices.
I have decided that new england in the winter gets dark way too early due to the ridiculousness of daylight savings time. Luckily in 2009 Obama will fix this problem just like he will fix all others!
28.December: Sweet! I gotta get my resume in order, and leave the necessary space under "Accomplishments".
LizardBreath is depicted in a photo on the front page of the NYT metro section; her blogging activities are not remarked upon.
I totally believed everything you said up until this point. The NYT canceled its Metro section! Now
To do. Visit Italy between May and July.
Harry Reid will be the most disappointing Democratic Senate leader in living memory.
It's not a prediction if it's already happened, togolosh.
6: I don't like Saxby Chambliss either, but that's kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
(Yes, I know I'm pwned. No, I don't care.)
Predictions: I will get laid less than Ben but more than I did in 2008.
There will be major changes to the current farm subsidies system, even though they probably won't accomplish much.
I will become the second or third longest-lasting writer in my office out of 10, even though I started here in October 2008, because this morning I found out about yet another writer leaving, this one to write policy for the new administration.
Obama will be expected to explain or apologize for some offensive remark made by Ludacris.
Apostropher gives up smoking
That begins in two days.
Nicotine lozenges, mi hermano. They are the quitter's friend.
New wave Alphorn will become swipple.
Good luck, Apo. I had good results with the patch. Basically expect to be grumpy and plan around it.
We'll get weak spring rain and the drought will continue for another year. No major floods. We'll have another surprisingly large wildfire season.
I'll be bummed by Salazar, but the head of Reclamation will be some surprise enviro-pick. Maybe Dr. Gleick, whom I'm busy pissing off this week, so I guess I won't work at Reclamation after all. Someone important at my agency will finally find my blog and fire me.
Gov. Palin will make some dumb unforced error by using governmental powers for her personal convenience and it will be so tacky that even Alaskans care.
California will hold a special election. Ballot measures to return our budgeting process to something rational will fail because that would lead to raising taxes. But we will also recall Schwartzenegger, because we have to scapegoat someone and he is erratic. Feinstein will not run for governor (and I will sigh in relief.) The real race will be between Villaraigosa and Jerry Brown. The CA Supreme Court will restore gay marriage in late spring.
I will deadlift 300lbs and benchpress bodyweight.
39: I've got a big box of the nicotine gum to use up first. It makes me a little sad, though. Feels like breaking up with the only girlfriend that ever really understood you.
expect to be grumpy
Sweet. Nobody will notice a difference.
I have decided that new england in the winter gets dark way too early due to the ridiculousness of daylight savings time.
Eh? DST is in the summer. Not that it isn't still ridiculous.
Feels like breaking up with the only girlfriend that ever really understood you.
Wha---? You're giving up weed, too?!? Say it ain't so!
Feels like breaking up with the only girlfriend that ever really understood you.
I occasionally realize that I was smoking in a dream the night before. The plan right now is that I get to buy a pipe at some point north of 45 or 50 and I get to start smoking again at 65 because by then, too late, etc. This isn't quitting, it's an extremely strict, decades-long sabbatical.
Feels like breaking up with the only girlfriend that ever really understood you.
Wow. This is exactly right (with gender adjustments as necessary).
Don't worry, Apo. There eventually comes a point where you look back, though fondly, and realize that for all the good times you had, she was just no good for you in the long run. You will probably even deal with that moment of weakness -- alcohol may well be involved -- where you go back "just this one more time" and discover she's not actually as amazing as you'd remembered after all.
Obama will deliver on healthcare. Millions of young, healthy Obama supporters will realize what the analogy to progressive taxation is in funding healthcare. Disillusion ensues.
Kadima will kick enough Hamas ass to head off Netanyahu.
I will get 78% laid. Once.
The friends I know that have given up smoking tobacco but not weed have found it too hard to sustain. The rituals of smoking, the feel of smoke in their lungs, etc. They've all decided to switch to laced baked goods.
The Larsen C ice shelf will disintegrate.
The first news reports will emerge of a new drug trend sweeping rural America. Newsweek will carry a small sidebar quoting a Missouri Sheriff as saying that the new drug is coming down "from Chicago" and that it's worse than Oxcycontin and crystal meth. The son of a Republican state legislator from Kentucky or South Carolina will be arrested for possessing it with intent to distribute. The ensuing craze will be the first big test of Obama's commitment to sensible harm reduction policies.
An attractive white female child will be abducted from a McMansion suburb. Within four days of the crime, the child will have higher name recognition in the U.S. than Joe Biden, and will have garnered more minutes of primetime network news coverage than the health care debate and the India-Pakistan war combined.
Aliens will invade because, like in 50s movies about nuclear war, we prove unable to handle our own technology. Except in this case, the "technology" is capitalism. Aliens institute free trade and abolish the capital gains tax cut. Utopia breaks out, but proves to be short-lived when the aliens are swindled out of their death ray technology. The plans for the death ray are widely distributed around the Internet thanks to BitTorrent, which leads to the extinction of the entire human race, except for uncolicky babies.
Knecht's would be a lot funnier if I thought they were at all unlikely.
The universe will finally realize its error and Rod Blagojevich will have never existed.
No fair—there'll be no way to check 60.
You're just bitter because you didn't get the Senate seat you were expecting.
Rod Blagojevich will have never existed.
Future readers of Unfogged will assume the blank comment 60 in this thread was a remnant of the ToS.
The real race will be between Villaraigosa and Jerry Brown.
Aliens institute free trade and abolish the capital gains tax cut.
Investment banking divisions and rich individuals across the US revolt as they realize their 20 years of capital losses carryforwards are now worthless.
54: Maybe Santa brought Apo a vaporizer for Christmas.
I'm enjoying reading everyone else's predictions.
On another note, this shot of the Hong Kong skyline is kind of cool, if you like that sort of thing. I have no idea how it was assembled.
51: But she is. I'm down to less than a pack a month, but she's just so sweet and sexy every time I light her up.
I totally hope you are right, Wrongshore. I'd like that outcome. ('Course, I have friends in LA who say good things about Villaraigosa, so maybe I'd like that outcome too.)
65: That's it! Investment bankers and the rich are all vaporized by the death ray. The only survivor with sufficient financial acumen is disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, who teams up with hard-as-nails former Illinois Governer Rod Blagojevich to trick the aliens. It'll be just like in Independence Day.
Masculinity will be in crisis.
Things will be hard for farmers, and traditional values will be under threat.
69: Oh, just shut up before I start wanting to drunk dial Joe Camel! Seriously, you have to make that clean and complete break before the clarity kicks in. Eventually, she really does start to seem ridiculous.
ToS will have a breakthrough and become an accepted, perhaps even beloved regular commenter.
At least three individuals will be indicted on charges stemming from the U.S. Attorney scandal. All the charges will be technical counts related to obstruction of the investigation. The indictments will contain tantalizing references to unindicted co-conspirators "White House Aide D" and Congressman E", but no other charges will ever be filed.
Former Alabama Gov. Siegelman will win a new trial on appeal, and the DOJ will decline to re-prosecute the case.
Housing prices will continue to fall. Former real-estate market holdouts such as myself will take it as an opportunity to buy in. This will turn out to be a mistake.
On a live "talking heads" segment on Fox News, Geraldo Rivera will blatantly insult Sen. Jim Webb, who will lose his temper and shout "You wouldn't have the guts to say that to my face, you little pansy-ass queer!"
A major row will break out in the comments section of Daily Kos between those who want to censure Webb for his homophobic slurs and those who want to make him Majority Leader forthwith.
71: The only survivor with sufficient financial acumen is disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, who teams up with hard-as-nails former Illinois Governer Rod Blagojevich to trick the aliens into investing in their hedge fund. The aliens, who still assume log-normal returns distributions are accurate approximations, cannot resist the siren call of an exceedingly high Sharpe ratio. We invest all their money into a naive put-writing strategy, then when they lose it all in the next crash, we repossess their spaceships and death rays to cover the debts. Half of the aliens open restaurants hawking their native cuisine in still-dirt-cheap strip mall space throughout the Sun Belt. The other half decide to take a few months in south Asia "finding themselves" before heading to whatever law school will take them. Warren Buffett buys out the rest of their portfolio for the change he found in his and Charlie Munger's couch cushions.
A movement in the House to bail out the aliens' investment losses is narrowly beaten when Tom Tancredo doesn't read his aide's briefing on the bill very carefully and votes against, saying "Amnesty was bad enough, but now we're going to give them money, too?!".
I think the question in the post is one that Knecht has been waiting to answer his entire life. We're lucky that Becks asked the question this year; if she'd waited until 2010 it would have been too late.
Do you guys remember the obituary of Bush written in like 2004?
Did it read: "Bush re-elected, pretzels to be served at inaugural ball"?
78.2: You might say that this prediction is impossible, as Tom Tancredo did not stand for re-election, but you would merely be missing my most subtle prediction of them all! Has anyone ever seen Jason Chaffetz and Tom Tancredo in the same room? I thought not.
Hosni Mubarak will be assassinated in retaliation for his involvement in the attack on Gaza. There will be a struggle for succession between the military leadership and business elites on one hand, and the mid-level officer corps and professional classes (i.e., the Muslim Brothers) on the other. Major social unrest will result.
This isn't my prediction, but C's, and I also saw it somewhere else today, but anyway: there will be a lot more Tesco Metros appearing in the husk-like corpses of Woolworths across the country.
Stanley will get married.
Standpipe Bridgeplate will have gender reassignment surgery but NO ONE WILL NOTICE.
As for 54 and the "baked laced goods": that's just so impractical for everyday use, surely? I do sometimes try to think of better ways to do this (I probably only smoke about 30% of the year, but when I have some, I smoke daily), because apart from anything else it says on my life insurance that I don't smoke and it would be really fucking annoying to die of smoking-related disease, but I should probably try harder. Perhaps I will look into vaporizers.
China will have its equivalent of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire--an industrial disaster in which corporate malfeasance and administrative laxity provoke such outrage that the government is forced to get serious about workplace safety. Major importing nations, which are feeling tremendous protectionist pressures at home, pressure China to agree to a set of regulatory reforms. The Communist Party, seeking to prevent workplace safety from becoming the seed of an independent trade union movement, decides to get out in front of the issue by creating a regulatory apparatus with real teeth.
Fricking pwnd at 1. Take the dudes to the store, and I miss the thread posted just for me. Life is unfair.
Prediction for 2009? We just might, might get to 2009. Gotta be positive and gotta have hope. We could make it to another Tuesday.
i: a major caldera erupts
ii: the world's vanishing bees come back (and they're mad as hell)
iii: studs terkel's work is proved to be entirely made up
iv: someone dies in space
30: Yes, things in the future are largely hypothetical.
(actually i think calderas are what happens after the magma chamber collapses: so "a major magma chamber collapses, to form a caldera")
In the future it will turn out that the question of whether things in the future are largely hypothetical is a major point of contention in analytic philosophy, causing this thread to go hopelessly off-topic.
January: Al Franken will join the US Senate, but only after GOP attempts to obstruct his seating through parliamentary manoever lead the evening news broadcasts for two consecutive days. In the end, Majority Leader Reid grants the GOP valuable concessions on floor rules for the remainder of the term.
Holy shit, I hope the rest of my predictions don't all follow the script. TPM:
It now looks like the Senate GOP could end up trying to block the seating of Al Franken, assuming he is declared the winner next week in the Minnesota recount. NRSC chairman John Cornyn put out a statement accusing the Franken campaign of falsely declaring victory, and denouncing the idea of provisionally seating him while the expected legal dispute of the election is resolved
In 2009, we'll all wish Hillary was Majority Leader instead of Secretary of State.
I hope the frogs and other amphibians come back. We're moving in the direction of losing a whole class of vertebrates.
Na href="http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2007/11/new_caecilian_species_discover.php">Caecilians, the coolest amphibians, and not merely because the parents feed their own flesh to their offspring.
87.i - There has been a major uptick in seismic activity at Yellowstone. Last eruption was ~1000 times larger than Pinatubo. KABOOM!
Feeding your own flesh to your offspring is not cool. It is disgusting. It's like cannibalism+incest wrapped up in one slimy freaky-ass package.
Seriously, people, don't do this.
Walk a mile in my shoes before you judge, Togolosh.
most of these predictions will be wrong.
also, ben will get laid less than predicted, Di more.
also, ben will get laid less than predicted
An evergreen truth.
I didn't claim to be going out on a limb there, ben.
In 2009, we'll all wish Hillary was Majority Leader instead of Secretary of State.
Did she have to be either? Why couldn't she be White House Chef, or Official White House Stamp-Licker, or Garbageman General? Or maybe even nothing at all? She's a millionaire; it's not like she needs to work or anything.
Garbageperson General, island rail.
That has a certain ring to it! island rail should really think about running!
Okay, we'll wish someone other than Reid was Majority Leader.
94:There has been a major uptick in seismic activity at Yellowstone. Last eruption was ~1000 times larger than Pinatubo. KABOOM!
Yes, a little swarm of earthquakes over the last few days. If it is a precursor, probably just to something relatively minor. But the last three biggies were 2.1M, 1.3M & 650K years ago so ... the prudent will start searching for a good shopping cart now.
(I'm down with it as long as it fried Dick Cheney in his Jackson Hole home first before I and most everyone else succumb during a few sun-blotted-out years of anarchy, food riots and starvation. But afterward, hey! local agriculture—for a while.)
Events in the future aren't necessarily hypothetical. The future is determined by the present, depending on the meaning of "determined" and "is".
The Euro falls to its lowest level against the dollar since 2000.
Now you're joking.
Econolicious will yet again fail to monetize prescient predictions.
Popular culture will go downmarket.
Glenn Greenwald's complaints will continue as voluminously as in 2005-2008.
The distinction between blogosphere and media will jump the shark cross the chasm.
I'll quit drinking, one way or another. And the price of cashews will go down.
Events in the future aren't necessarily hypothetical.
Just so long as they're *actually* hypothetical.
The house I'm buying will fall in value 25-30%, and a bunch of commenters will say they told me so and I'll grind my teeth a bit but not fret overmuch. The stupid college or another stupid college will rehire me in the fall. I'll pay down a chunk of our debt but not all of it. Sybil and I will write our manuscript. Mr. B and I will continue to get along better.
On the down side, unemployment will skyrocket and global warming will progress. The war in Afghanistan will get complicated and ugly. Iraq will see at least one major political assassination and a formal civil war. There will be more than one major new refugee crisis due to hurricanes and economic collapse. The US budget deficit will balloon past the point of no return and the dollar will collapse.
What are you and Sybil writing about?
I will assess the wreckage of my personal and professional lives and try to come up with some reason not to fake my own death to escape the nagging sense that my college alumni magazine is hunting me like a lame fox. Brief but inconclusive consideration will be accorded the contention that sitting around feeling sorry for myself is not an effective way to meet women.
There will be a brief 'recovery' during January to May, and then the bottom will fall out again, in spite of every attempt to keep banks/stocks/home prices propped up. Many people will be shocked. Deflation will continue. At some point, likeliest late 2009 (in the autumn drought), early 2010 at the latest, there will be a capitulation, and stock prices will finally collapse to bargain levels. Meanwhile, the administration will finally bite bullet at that point and nationalize the banks over the vehement protests of Robert Rubin. Geithner (sp!) forced out. Employment peaks at 15% in November, around the time serious construction work on various stimulus projects begins. Real effective unemployment (discouraged, etc.) is way higher.
Harry Reid will be kicked along/bypassed by Obama, and complaints will die down, until the end of the year when he attempts to reassert himself as leader of the Senate. This will cause a major legislative defeat for Obama, and in the fallout Reid will be forced out. Lieberman will leave the D caucus.
The US will be forced to leave Afghanistan except for token forces, after the Pakistani government is overthrown again. (Well, precisely, continued inability to resupply will prevent much buildup, and force some withdrawal. The ISI will make it's move after the US starts to draw down.) Osama bin Laden will declare victory. Afterwards, risk of a South Asian war will die away again, as Pakistan returns to asserting itself over the Taliban. The US does not withdraw completely from Iraq.
Major riots in China, but the government is not overthrown; renounces 'capitalism'. Russia does nothing, but Putin is forced to tighten up economically internally to avoid social unrest. Neo-conservatives continue to demand action on Russia, war on Iran, attack on Pakistan. Hillary on neo-con shitlist. Even as neo-Confederates come to fore, and neo-cons stay in their perches, the R party outside of those districts practically dead.
Nothing much actually happens; everyone hunkers down and waits for change which doesn't arrive til next year. As a consequence, the crime rate skyrockets, along with a massive explosion of freaky 'human interest'/crime stories as people turn away from politics and seek refuge from the economy, and the networks and newspapers struggle to survive. Scandals over fake stories.
Next Christmas much less gloomy due to diminished expectations, even though people are poorer. Continued religious revival, but decline of religious movement in politics. Much volunteerism, not as effective as it appears.
max
['That's all wrong of course, since I have to wait a few months to be able to recalibrate for Obama's governing style.']
More seriously, 111.2 looks about right.
I do not expect the US & World to find the bottom in 2009. So it's gonna be a long fucking first term.
IIRC, by the end of 1933, FDR had his own personal examiner, non-local, in every major bank in the US, studying the books and looking over shoulders. Another jobs program for the Lehman layoffs!
Obama & his crew don't have a clue. Only Krugman and some ignored Post-Keynesians have a clue, and they barely get it. Stimulus package:epic fail.
I don't really blame anyone, it is only late 1930.
There will be the first shots fired overseas.
Only Krugman and some ignored Post-Keynesians have a clue, and they barely get it.
Thank god for bob mcmanus to help sort it all out!
Only Krugman and some ignored Post-Keynesians have a clue, and they barely get it. Stimulus package:epic fail.
Well, Krugman strongly favors the stimulus package, so if he has a clue...
I'm pretty worried about the stimulus package too, though.
Charles Krauthammer's column will become weekly reading for leftists who supported Obama and now need something to sustain their belief that he is a crazy radical leftist.
Sonia Gandhi will become an Italian-coutured human shield in an India-Pakistan war.
Joe the Plumber's book will sell more copies than Pinter's "Collected Plays." Deservedly.
Britney Spears will find the love of a good man.
I am also hoping that President Obama carefully disentangles us from Georgia, but again, I don't expect to hear any good news on that front for awhile.
We just need Sherman to burn and pillage his way to the sea again.
War in Moldova, unrest in the Ukraine.
Collapse of government in Pakistan.
More sovereign debt defaults in South America.
116,117:Krugman and PK's want 2-3 tmes as much action as they will get from Obama/Congress, and I think that will still be half what we need.
The worst recession since 29-33 lasted 16 months.
We are at 13 months already. 6 more months and confidence will not come flowing back like spring sunshine. 12 more months and a major, and I mean WWII major, military victory might not do it.
I think deflation is now locked in. Boomers will be selling assets for thirty years. We are 30-40s fucked.
If Obama wants to survive, it will have to be some kind of revolution. He will have to grab the country and juggle the fucker like kittens.
Will he? Will he soon enough? Think about FDR's thousands of loyal bank examiners in 1933. No, Obama won't.
Canned food & water, & ammo, folks.
The existence of a Saudi nuclear weapons program gets confirmed.
Krugman's ultrawonky piece yesterday was interesting. Full employment is necessary.
Even I can do some math. Let's see, Obama's 800 billion divided over two years, is supposed to get us 1.3 million jobs a year.
We are losing 500k jobs a month. Pop rise demands 150k new jobs a month. That is oh, 8 million gov't created jobs a year fo a couple years.
We need 5-7 trillion a year in stimulus, or less money and more planned economy.
My math can be wrong, but not wrong enough, I'm afraid.
112: Stuff.
So, do you like . . . stuff?
And why do it early?
You get a person unemployed for 5 years, how much "stimulus" does it take to get her to buy a new car on a for 25k credit? Get her a gov't job that pays food, housing, healthcare, is she confidant enough to go into debt. or does she wonder what Pres Romney will do in 2012?
I don't blame people for not getting it. Everything solid must melt into air.
Joe the Plumber's book will sell more copies than Pinter's "Collected Plays." Deservedly.
And I say ... undeservedly!
Take that, contrarian.
Zimbabwe becomes a failed state, with a major burst of ethnic violence with >10,000 killed and millions displaced.
Despite some severe bumps in the road, Iraq will end the year more stable than it began.
Iran will make substantial moves towards normalizing relations with the US.
127:I expect oil prices to end 2009 lower than today.
And what happened in the mid-late 80s after the last oil price crash? In the oilarchies and Levant?
50-75k American troops in Iraq in 2012. All y'all will just have to vote for Palin/Romney, bein diappointed and all.
122: Your math is wrong (Obama's advisors are trying to say we will have 2.5 million more jobs than we do now two years from now, and in any case there are many back of the envelope ways to figure the stimulus gap, all of which give a significantly smaller figure than $5-7 trillion). But your concern is well placed. We basically have the sane establishment in there now as opposed to the crazies. But the sane establishmentarians are the ones who laid the groundwork for the current mess back in the 90s. You have to bank on e.g. Summers intellectual flexibility, openness to new ideas, and capacity for change, all of which I think/hope is considerable. But the system has not been pushed to the wall and people are not quite willing to take radical steps.
A big issue with stimulus is that there may not be enough sort of standard ways to spend the money rapidly now...what we could really use is a way to put the U.S. to work building supplying infrastructure for, say, China. Really unleashing demand for environmentally clean growth and consumption from a market of 1.3 billion, most of whom are poorer than all but the poorest people here, would hypercharge things. And they've got a ton of dollars stockpiled to fund it.
131:I have not visited my econblogs today, and was pretty light yesterday. Krugman's wonk piece felt like a preparation for another piece with a number. But maybe a number only given privately.
I am also hoping that President Obama carefully disentangles us from Georgia
I say cut loose the whole of the South.
The South and the border states. But Ohio and Indiana are needed as a transportation corridor.
Obama's advisors are trying to say we will have 2.5 million more jobs than we do now two years from now ...more?
I don't think so. I think they are saying they will create 2.5 million jobs. I hope to fuck they don't think there will no net job loss in the next two years. Unemployment lags. U6 is over 13% already.
Another way to look is percent population employed, whatever, the number that runs in the 60s. I think we are 2-3% below full employment, which is what 5 million jobs needed? Like, right now? I think I will stand by 8 million jobs in the next two years to avoid a depression.
Krugman's piece about requiring full employment just to keep from going further down was a serious important piece of work.
I say cut loose the whole of the South.
I've been saying that for years. At least since November 2000.
That leaves you with no decent beaches on the east coast whatsoever. You should grant waivers to VA and NC at least.
Come to think of it, a waiver to NC would be wise.
There are some nice beaches in Maine, Apo. But if by "decent" you mean something like "warm-watered," I guess you have a point.
The pro-beach contingent is just a subset of the pro-coast contingent. Be serious. We also need to grant waivers to the mountainous regions. For lo, I will not favor the beaches over the mountains.
Also, props to the beaches, or rather sea-side, in Maine.
137: Well, you will all laugh at me if mention the beaches in NJ, so instead I will mention the beaches of RI -- very lovely.
133: Tossing out NC and GA and keeping, say, CT and NJ? Fuck *that* noise.
(Mildly)
This statism is, of course, absurd. Debating the merits of teensy states like CT and NJ is like debating the admissibility of ... er ... whatever portions of California. I say it again.
State boundaries, like national boundaries, are artificial.
I say.
(/mildly)
144:Ya know, I don't mention my current whitebread music tastes (which do include 30% blues, from TYA to Snooks Eaglin) but there is some kind of purpose to my trying to follow the progression from English regional ballads to Martin Carthy to Emmylou to the contemporary bluegrass revival...
...which centers around places like North Carolina, Georgia, Colorado, New Mexico, Northern Arizona.
Not completely sure if it is aging boomers or young urban professionals. But "High Germany" is still around, again, and that's kinda interesting.
A lot of science types like bluegrass. It's sort of precise, obsessive music.
Well, to me in part it is about framing resistance to war, empire and class in a context that doesn't just go back to the DFH's or Marx but back around 500 years.
Those 60s British folkies were so smart.
Not so clear about the motives of the Victorian broadsides and collectors.
There's more involved, in the modal forms and undramatic delivery etc. Not exactly Gilbert & Sullivan.
Stanley will get married.
Very funny, asilon.
Well, marriage is no laughing matter, Stanley. And if you don't believe me, just ask Emerson.
150: I figured asilon was having a laugh about this (which, by the by, my grandma thought was a great idea, as I learned over the holidays).
2009 Bond & Currency Markets, Deficits, Maybe ...Numerian at the Agonist
I am pretty sure I read at Menzie Chinn saying the Baltic Dry Index was way below trend thru 2012. Imagine large steel or commodity shipping and you can see why they reserve ships so far ahead. In many cases the ships need to be built.
Great Depression II is locked in. I am fairly certain that Japan & China would prefer the US would run to hyperinflation, with renewed consumption. than deflation & depression that would kill their domestic export economies. So they would continue to buy, or at least not sell treasuries, as long as the US markets buy their products.
Print. Print. Print.
I read an article somewhere suggesting that Japan and China would actually write off some of our debt as a kind of Marshall Plan.
In 1930 iron ore shipping from Minnesota apparently dropped to zero. Minnesota's mines were the most productive in the world at that time.
Coming Trade Conflict ...Yves Smith
Angry Bear Predictions ...I liked vtcodger's
Generally, 2009 will be unmitigated hell, made worse by Republican obstructionism and Obama's compromise & comity.
Wrongshore,
You can say it will be undeserved, but Joe the Plumber speaks from the lower intestine in a way that Pinter never could. (Pinter generally spoke from a region just below that or well above it.)
Harold Pinter spoke from a region much lower than the fourth waistcoat button.
I forget who linked to Pinter's The Collection at Youtube, but it was sweet. Olivier, Bates, Mirren, MacDowell being all elliptical bout something or other for an hour and a half.
My safety prediction is those goofy Elton John 2ooX glasses will be rare and will not even be worn with retro-irony.
I predict that Jerry Orbach will come back from the dead and haunt us all.
Predictions? Like Oscars?
Sean Penn, Mickey Rourke, Frank Langella, Phillip Seymour Hoffman?
I hate the fucking oscars.
I say cut loose . . . the border states.
Let Minnesota, Montana, and Idaho fly the maple leaf! We need no Dakota but South Dakota!
Wisconsin, you'll be required to leave Milwaukee with us.
Update on 163: Richard Sclafani and Peter Cicero in Gothamist halt production of patent number 335,134, "Novelty Eyeglass Frames."
53: Likud will win the Israeli elections. Center-left parties killing Arabs as an election stunt hasn't worked the last two times.
I'm eagerly anticipating the sex with bears part.
164: He will regenerate himself into TWIN Jerry Orbachs through his donated corneas.
