Coming up:
Unprecedented unemployment, regardless of recovery, in every country.
A sputtering recovery; fits and starts; worse for old Europe and the United States, better for Emerging Countries.
Resumption of convergence in transition economies.
At least one high level political assassination in the developed world, and two in the emerging world.
Steady rise in energy prices contained only by continued slow growth.
Resumption of dollar decline, contrary to current trends.
Sovereign default, in Latvia to start with, with possible followers. one by one, not mass defaults.
Higher interest rates throughout or another bubble burst.
Return of inflationary pressure.
Intra-national inequality increases.
Social democratic agenda quietly withdrawn, and replaced by populism.
Sterling to be a shadow-euro with or without the blessing of the ECB.
Economic globalisation grows, despite sprinkles of protectionism everywhere.
Champagne drinking at 4.30 in the afternoon becomes fashionable if not compulsory.
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5 comments:
when i was a lad i used to drink in the white hart in hatfield with a scotsman who proclaimed that all the clever scots left scotland, which may have been right,however thirty years on i believe they have had a change of mind and kept the clever ones and sent us the idiots instead.there called nu labourers (for ease of identification).in 1960 hatfield was the future cast in the furnace of the white heat of technology.today it's a shithole.thank you margaret,john,tony and gordon.
That really is one of those lists that could be added to, ad infintum.
I concur with most of your points - a no employment recovery looms, that and the end of the old world fiscal dominance will see a very different world balance of power by 2012 I think. The end of capitalism, or just a geographical shift?
Who to thank Anon?
I'm inclined more to Heath, Wilson, Callaghan; to the CPGB in the unions, not forgetting the long marchers in the schools and universities with their contribution to social fragmentation.
Tony and Gordon are consolidators not innovators.
Heath is the most destructive politician ever to come to power in England;his natural heir is Brown. But Heath set the agenda for UK politics from then to now. Callaghan was simply the union's mouthpiece, claiming their share in the carve-up. While Thatcher and Major struggled to alter Heath's blueprint, Thatcher was so very angry at times she acted almost spitefully, which weakened her, and she had, too, so many fronts on which she had to act - CPGB-infiltrated and controlled unions that had overwhelmed Heath and eventually Callaghan. Technological change itself facing too narrow a skill base (those selective schools did need reforming and extending, but closing them was not the answer). The long marchers - using real social grievance like a crow bar on inevitable social fracture lines resulting from social change (or history, as some of us call it) - she was unable to contain or even mollify. Far too may men of the Heath were seeded throughout the establishment working for what is now called progressive, post democratic governance - Heath's failed attempt to continue in power after he was voted out was a terrible early warning signal of the constitutional tidal wave that has now hit.
'Hatfield' was an exemplar of how good, co-operative, non- ideological, pragmatic government could produce a decent house, a secure job, and a chance for the kids. Accompanied by individual independence and choice, and personal privacy with very high levels of social peace. Scorched earth policies are thought of as what Brown does now, but the socioeconomic and political model that produced 'Hatfield' has been rendered impossible of realisation ever again by New Labour longterm scorched-earthism.
Which is why the place Hatfield is now as you describe. It was a war zone. We lost.
Ad infinitum P? We ran out of champagne-consumption-while-still-able-to-produce-coherent-thought capacity.
But I do hope you are wrong about capitalism - well, market capitalism. It's the only democratic economic system. Did a wonderful job breaking up realised socialism and realised misery.
I like the last prediction.
Not so keen on the others.
Happy New Year to you!
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