My recycling bin got a lot more full last night. The reason is that I took the reams of predictions I had printed out from back in 2009, such as this, and dumped them once and for all. I’ve got a massive post coming later, but I wanted to share just one of these esteemed articles so we could see how it worked out. Click on any image for easier viewing………..
If you don’t want to bother reading it………..or even if you did……….here are the ten predictions, briefly paraphrased by me:
- The bull market ended in 2009 and the market will be so bad that the government will enforce stock market holidays.
- Tens of millions of 401k holders will be wiped out, so the Fed will buy hundreds of billions of dollars of equities.
- Thousands of retirees will starve or freeze to death in their own homes and by 2012 the welfare system will have collapsed.
- Quantitative easing will fail to drive lending and consumption.
- The only buyers for US Bonds will be the US government itself.
- Unemployment will rise to 25% and then the government will stop reporting it because it will be too embarrassing.
- Police and government workers will turn corrupt to survive.
- By 2012, thousands of malls, motels, etc. will be ghost towns.
- By 2010’s end, tens of millions of people will have stopped paying their mortgages.
- Obama will be a one-term president, millions of immigrants will go home, and by 2012 the U.S. will be coming apart at the seams.
So, listen, I know I’ve made my fair share of bad predictions. But, c’mon, this one is a no-hitter. Not a single one of these fanciful prognostications transpired.
Amusingly, the author begins the piece with this demand:
When these predictions come true, I expect to be rewarded with a seven-figure consulting gig, a book contract, or a high-level position in whatever administration succeeds the doomed Obama team
Gotcha.