Diegetics

I can't believe we have gone this long without a prediction thread. Anyone have any demons to exercise?

The financial markets will continue to fluctuate while
pundits will continue to prognosticate.

I will continue to post on this forum. I think.

Spenglerman will develop an unrequited schoolboy obsession with FL Michelle Obama.

Despite all the hysteria on the Right over "debasing the Dollar", core inflation will stay below 3 percent in 2011.

Best Buy and other retailers will begin expelling and prosecuting people who dissuade customers from in-store warranty services.

Private prisons will seek to improve their public image by using social media, celebrities and reality television.

Corporate owned life insurance will boom for America's younger demographics, improving incentives to hire them.

Private security services will discover viral marketing's ability to attract new clients and begin creating incidents to bolster their reputations. People will be hurt.

Mobile Americans will abandon their citizenship without controversy or second thought.

The delivery of civil suits will use social media to improve efficiency in emerging legal markets of libel and defamation.

Time for another Black Swan. Suggest that China's underperforming loans finally become too bad to cover up, resulting shock to the system brings widespread riots and political change, resulting in a messy democratic China which is even more xenophobic and nationalistic than the present system.

Meanwhile Western economies continue to muddle through. The euro and the dollar survive, just.

It won't be that, of course, but something else we have never thought of.

Lindsay Lohan is accepted into an Anglican teaching order.

Walnuts are found to be an aphrodisiac for pandas , WWF has to get a new mascot.

Americans still won't give a damn about soccer.

The body of Gary Coleman will be exhumed and made a holy relic by republicans that defected from the movement after Sarah Palin is found to have been a staffer at Mother Earth News in the 80's.

Asian women will develop a fetish for fat middle adged balding Americans.

Glen Beck has himself caned and crucified on the Washington mall so save America from George Soros. MelGibson directs.

Obama will use his weekly address to handicap all basketball games starting the week of March Madness. Manages to slip in " it's not my fault" 15 times a minute thanks to the onset of Tea-Party induced Tourette's.

Perez Hilton goes back into the closet.

Putin colonizes Jupiter. By himself , yet !

Hundreds of Americans will die in combat in Afghanistan. ANSWER and Code Pink won't hold a massive anti-war rally on the Mall.

GITMO will still hold prisoners. Airstrikes from Predators and Reapers in the NWFP continue. Certain intel agencies will continue certain policies under the auspices of the Patriot Act. Americans will mostly exit Iraq.

North Korea will have another nuclear test. A new push for multi-lateral diplomacy will produce...another season of bribes to keep the shakedown quiet for a couple of quarters.

The Obama's will take 4 vacations, play 48 rounds of golf, hold at least a dozen parties at the WH for celebrity friends, and unemployment will hover between 9 and 10 points. Unfortunately, Congress will not match the number of vacations and trips to the links.

Tea Party folks will find out they're the new "African Americans" or "Right-to-Lifers" (AKA pandered to by a party, but with little substance).

The Anti-Christ will be revealed (as if we didn't know it was you, Justin Bieber...evil bastard).

Keith Olberman will get caught stalking Sarah Palin. Beck will cry about something. O'Reilly will sexually harass the two hot lawyers always on his show. The little Maddow dude will still shill "R bad, D good." The big hair moron Hannity will still shill "D bad, R good!" Julian Assange and Wikileaks will still only publish information on Western States that won't feed him a polonium daiquiri.

The TSA will insist on anal probes for all children, Nuns, old ladies with walkers and WWII veterans with canes due to the March 2011 infamous butt bomber, a 27-year old Muslim man living in Europe.

Obama will publish the long-form birth certificate and say "suck it Morons" to the Birthers. It will then be proven to have been printed on a dot-matrix printer that wasn't around until 1983. Dan Rather will swear it is still authentic.

We'll still be told how there is no inflation because our homes are worth two Happy Meals. As we spend $150 at the grocery store for 10 items, $95 to fill the gas tank, and $150 for one night in a Motel 6 with dead bodies still in the bathtub, we'll be thankful the official inflation rate is only 3%.

Patriots will win the Super Bowl vs. the Saints. Spain wins the UEFA Cup against Germany. Boston wins the NBA championship (hahahah Lebron!).

The Mayan Calendar will be a very popular subject at the end of the year.

The economy will ride the holiday uptick for the entire year before the apocalyptic Black Swan results in an economic catastrophe that reshapes the world order in 2012.

Wars will rage on.
People will die.

I predict we will all be very wrong about our predictions...

Yes, inflation has become rather serious in the past ten years.

I expect the economy to be bullish in the next six months, if New Orleans was any indication. Pretty much the entire French Quarter ran out of Bread Pudding because so many tourists came to town and they didn't expect it at all. Every place we went to said they were blown away by how many people were there. We ran into several people we know, some from Texas, some from Atlanta, and some friends of mine from New York who I didn't run into were down there concurrently. Perhaps it's isolated, in that everyone went to New Orleans, but anecdotally I see it as an increase in the willingness to spend. From what I heard the entire holiday season indicated that. And often markets and investment follow holiday consumer spending, because those indicators make people feel more optimistic.

Contrary to the delusional ranting on another thread, China and Russia will not corner the market in silver and gold.