What I Think Is Going To Happen

Predicting the future is a fool’s game, and I have often been proven to be a fool, so I feel qualified to give it a whirl.

1. The price of gasoline is going to continue going up, with occasional gaps up and slower declines from time to time. As $3 and then $4 per gallon is approached, consumption will show a small but increasing decline. Conservation will catch on.

2. Commerce will contract during this decline as the cost of doing business for all oil driven enterprises, e.g. farming, transportation and plastics, increases and more companies go under.

3. Increased joblessness, homelessness, hopelessness, suicide rate, and crime, all as natural consequences of the noose tightening on the necks of the workers, with stagnant wage increases, and in many cases, wage decreases, as illegal aliens continue to flood into the US.

4. The price of gold will continue to try to go up, but will be held back by bullion banks and their cohorts at all nations’ central banks. To say that the gold market is rigged is to understate the case. Of course it’s rigged, that’s why they call it the central bank.

5. Eventually these banks will be unable to offset the rising demand. Gold will gap up in an eye-popping fashion. Silver will do the same, and eventually outpace gold in terms of percentage gain. The silver demand growth is much greater than that of gold and will continue to grow.

6. Electrical brown-outs and then rolling blackouts will increase, and become the norm in the US.

7. Housing prices will continue their slow slide down, foreclosures will jump (46% of mortgage holders have some form of Adjustable Rate Mortgage), and homes will be boarded up.

8. Eventually Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, and the Federal Pension Insurance Program will go under. Huge accounting “frauds” will be unearthed.

9. An event will occur which will be the tipping point of a major currency, financial and stock market crash; NASDAQ 800, DOW 4000. Even the hyper-hedgefunds will stop buying Treasuries.

10. This event will probably involve the global oil distribution network. Gasoline will gap up to $8 to $10 per gallon.

11. As petrochemical fertilizer becomes too expensive to use, The Great American Breadbasket will return to its original condition as The Great American Desert.

12. Global delivery of goods to the fat American consumer will cease. Wal-Mart will collapse as Chinese goods become very expensive, especially when the remimbi is un-pegged from the dollar. (Are the Chinese waiting to unpeg as the coup de gras to the crashing dollar?

13. The dollar decline will have continued throughout this unfolding, and inflation will have jumped up at some point, prompting the Fed to jump interest rates to 1980’s levels, and higher.
World-wide recession, and then depression, will set in.

14. Today’s third-world countries will suffer less shock, as they are less dependent upon oil.

15. Regional wars will continue and increase.

16. The “Only Superpower in the World” will be stretched so thin it will collapse, as long supply lines become untenable. Long before this, however, the draft will have been reinstated and the people will take to the streets.

17. As food disappears from the grocery store shelves, riots break out in the cities, police attempt but are unable to quell, and there is no National Guard to call in as they are all abroad fighting the Oil Wars.

18. People begin to flee the cities as the store of resources is used up.

19. Those currently living the furthest from the high-rise high-tech centers will fare the best. Communities currently off the grid will thrive.

20. The human and domestic animal die-off will begin. Corporate enterprise will cease.

21. High level organization will cease and power will descend to the tribal level. Warlords with gangs will roam freely.

22. Those currently living with the land and off the grid will have to organize to protect their holdings. Trespassers will be shot.

23. Those with survival skills will survive. Self-sufficiency will be key.

24. All solar panels will wear out.

25. Centralized electricity generation and distribution will cease.

26. Globalization will cease.

27. The 100-year Fossil Fuel Frenzy will come to an end.

28. Global warming will continue, sea levels will rise up to 19 feet, but the natural balance will out. This will take hundreds of years, but life on earth will continue and thrive.

29. Off the grid will be the norm, as the grid will devolve.

30. Humans who band together in tribes will rediscover their humanity. The extended family will form the basis for the tribes.

31. All knowledge will not be lost, and we will not all live in caves.

32. Barter and trade will be the standard, but gold and silver money will still be currency. US dollars will be tinder.

33. Just as all other civilizations have failed, so will ours. What evolves to replace it will be interesting, but the Fossil Fuel Frenzy civilization was a one-off phenomenon, and will not reoccur.

34. As 90% of the humans die, peace and tranquility will eventual come to the planet. The human cancer with its uncontrolled growth will be defeated. Humans will again be part of nature. Tribal war will become ceremonial, and the coup stick will be popular.

34. It's all good...except for one thing. Depleted uranium. The entire globe will suffer "gulf war syndrome" due to the 2000 tons of atomized uranium placed in the atmosphere by the US during this war.

35. Cancer rates will climb to 50% by 2020.

36. Most babies born will die from their deformities. Those that do not may have evolved immunity.

We can only hope.

Note: These are not my original ideas. Original sources are contained in past blogs.