Predictions For 2015

Wow am I flying blind on this one, but here goes. I've thought about this long and hard and here are some predictions I have for the upcoming year. Please feel free to add your own and we'll revise at the end of the year! Huzzah! Accountability! ;-)

● Obama Proves Impotent: Obama will push five or six “major” Executive Orders with the idea of circumventing the Congress to impose his “ideology” on the country. There will be a lot of noise, gnashing of teeth and the such surrounding these Orders, but they will ultimately prove to be impotent. He just doesn’t have the power or creativity to change enough.

By way of example, consider the immigration Order. Despite all the bravado, this Order can’t prevent deportations... it can only delay them. As a result, illegals have more to lose by coming forward to take advantage of the Order than they do staying hidden and hoping never to get caught.

● Supreme Court v. Obamacare: This one is easy: the Supreme Court will uphold the Obamacare subsidies despite the law clearly not allowing them. This strikes me as obvious because Justice Roberts has clearly decided to protect Obamacare, probably because he’s very, very pro-Big Business, which means he will want to protect the insurance carriers who cut the dirty deal that is Obamacare.

● The Pope Scores: Somewhere during the year, I expect to see two data points related to the Catholic Church. First, I think the Pope’s efforts to move beyond controversial issues and instead focus on the Church’s mission of providing comfort and general moral guidance will result in a flood of new converts. I’m not sure how many, but it will be a statistically relevant increase. Secondly, there will be a series of polls which will show that the public at large now sees the Church as reformed from its sex abuse scandals, and ready to move forward.

● Big Trouble In Big China: China seems to be headed for trouble. For decades, we were told that China needs to maintain 9%+ growth to maintain domestic peace. It sounds like their GDP has fallen to around 6% and may be even lower than that – it’s not clear because China lies to make its data seem more impressive.

Moreover, China seems to have problems: (1) their labor costs are now too high, with other Asian countries like Bangladesh taking away their low-end work, (2) China failed to develop a strong high-end economy, and (3) China has failed to develop the kinds of good relationships with its neighbors that will allow it to develop stronger markets. Further, China has been so aggressive with its neighbors that it seems to have caused an arms race it cannot afford and cannot win, and which risks Japan militarizing and drawing even closer to the US.

● Economic Disconnect Continues: I think the economic disconnect will continue. Big Business will make record profits. The stock market will slump in January/Feb, but then soar for the year... maybe as much as 20%. Retail investors (you and I) will miss the rally. Middle class incomes will continue to fall. Middle class jobs will continue to vanish... the villain this time is robotics, not China.

● Putting The Band Back Together: Putin will finish rebuilding the Soviet Union this year... at least as far as he will ever get it (he won’t get the Baltics back and he will have no influence over Eastern Europe). Sadly for him, the countries he is managing to pull back in are craphole countries that will drain his shrinking resources.

● Sony II: The Sony hacker scandal has legs for a number of reasons, including the likely eventual resignation of a couple of their officers, and a possible (though unlikely) sale of the studio. The bigger issue related to Sony, however, is that hackers may see the Sony incident as a new way to damage companies. Hence, look for more hackers to stop trying to disrupt systems and instead trying to steal e-mails and embarrassing documents to post online.

● Grievance Industries Continues to Fade: I think we’ve hit a tipping point where the public is done with the feminism, racism, etc. grievance industry. By and large, this means death by neglect. In 2015, more evidence of this will be seen by the inability of the grievance lobby to rally the public to whatever series of incidents arise in 2015 (rape allegations, police shootings).

● Cosby: Wow. I just don’t know how this will play out... with one exception: anyone who tries to jump into this issue and use it politically will find themselves as the escape hatch for the media and will be destroyed. Avoid this like the plague folks.

● The Gay Surprise: For some time now, I’ve been sure that the Supreme Court will let gay marriage move ahead at its own pace and will only step in to grant gay marriage nationwide after most states are onboard. The more I think about it, however, the more I suspect that the Supreme Court may be ready to bust out a surprise here. With polls showing an increasingly large majority of the public favoring gay rights, with the younger generations being overwhelmingly in favor, with even many GOP politicians now supporting the issue, and with the public increasingly treating the issue as non-controversial and resolved, I suspect that the Supreme Court may pull the trigger this year and “suggest” that gay marriage will be found to be a Constitutional right, with the intent being to get the appellate courts on the same page so the Supremes never need speak definitively on the issue.

● No NFL In LA: The NFL has been using the bluff of moving a team to LA to extort stadiums out of cities that already have teams. People are catching onto this, so the NFL has made a huge push lately to convince people that 2015 really will be the year that an NFL team moves to LA... honest... swear to God... IT WILL HAPPEN PEOPLE!! The San Diego Chargers are considered most likely. However, I think the LA bluff is just too valuable to the existing 32 teams to give it up, and the NFL will not let anyone move to LA.

● European Irrelevance Affirmed (again): Once again, I expect nothing consequential to come out of Europe this year.

● Lurching Left: For about a decade, South America has been moving leftward. Not coincidentally, their economies have begun to fade and sputter as a result. Look for them to continue to drift left, however, because their poor have learned how to vote themselves goodies and their poor way outnumber their middle classes.

In terms of countries of interest, watch the following: (1) Cuba post-liberalization with the US – look for a massive economic surge and the Americanization of the island, (2) Venezuela is tottering on collapse, but refuses to change...should make for an interesting year, and (3) Argentina is in deep kaka and Madame Kirchner seems to think that provoking a war may be her best way out of her mess. Her preferred target has been Britain, but I suspect that anyone will do in a pinch, and 2015 could provide that pinch.

● Wasted Opportunity: I suspect the GOP will waste the opportunity they’ve been given. I fear we will get (1) a series of meaningless bills that sound extreme as they are meant to please the fringe, but which the party knows Obama will veto. These won’t win over the unwinnable fringe, will anger the moderates, and will show the public that the GOP doesn’t understand the new political reality where the public sees meaningless show votes as sleazy. (2) We will get a couple of needless compromises that do nothing to advance genuine reforms conservatives will like – basically, the GOP will compromise on the wrong things.

● Defining Failure As Victory: Obamacare will continue to fall. It was supposed to cover 43 million people. Then we were told nine million would sign up the first year. Eight million did, but only six million paid their bills, yet we were told this was a huge victory for Obamacare. In year two, we were told to expect around 15 million initially. This was brought down to nine million total. Despite automatic signups, it looks like only eight million will be signed up, yet we will be told again that this is a huge victory.

● War?: I don’t see any new wars on the horizon this year. If anything, look for something in North-East Africa, in the neighborhood of Sudan.

● Bad Movies: 2014 was a banner year for pathetic films. I suspect 2015 will be a mirror image.

So what did I miss?