As both a former professional-forecaster of sorts (securities analyst, industry analyst), as well as a non-professional policy wonk, and occasional bet-maker on random things.... I believe the best forecasts are usually based on simple leading indicators benchmarked against behavioral data: there's usually a few pieces of data out there already telling you what's going on, and its just a matter of. Its not always obvious, and rarely is it direct, but it's usually titanic in its underlying message. Sorta like the Economist's 'Big Mac' index... sometimes proxy data spells out the present better than the actual reported major economic or political indicators. I'm a big fan of Intrade, for instance, in how it sheds light on certain themes & trends... e.g. http://www.intrade.com/ I also think people tend to under-implement basic demographic trends in their thinking. Or cyclical patterns. Or just long-term issues that don't jump up on the radar that often, but are always, always moving. There's always something much more powerful than the momentary issues lurking beneath the surface that will eventually emerge and become a fundamental game changer. Anyone surprised by the 'tea parties' for instance, I think was sleeping at the wheel for 8 years. I have been endlessly amused by the liberals who were shocked to discover that there were a plurality of republicans *dissatisfied* with the GOP between 2000-2008; I thought it was obvious in the 2008 primaries what was happening with the GOP base was by their very candidates... Huckabee, McCain, Ron Paul? Meaning, it was obvious there was serious fragmentation at play from the get-go... and that those people were not going to go away. anyhoo....

Predicting is hard, and yet predicting is sometimes easy; the trick I suppose is picking your personal leading indicators and sticking with them until they fail you badly.

A few personal calls for 2011> (mostly pretty tame)

- Obamacare goes to supreme court, fails constitutional test. A revised version is lamely put back in front of congress. Dies in process. Obama blames the political system.

- Unemployment peaks at nearly 11% by summer (10.5% or so); drops to under 9% by end of year.

- Fed funds rate comes up to 3% by end of year

- There will be at least one significant terror attack in a western state (by significant, I mean deaths between 50-100+) this year; it will be sourced not to the official Al Q, but rather domestic adherents

- North and South Korea resolve most recent spat peacefully, mainly via china intervention; new rounds of discussions announced; concessions re: their nuclear arsenal/capabilities again considered.

- The DXY (dollar index) hovers around +/- 5% of 80 all year; the predicted major crash in the dollar made by some never materializes, but a very weak longer term outlook looks likely

- No significant reform of Social Security or Medicare; (duh! This has been the easiest bet of anyone's lifetime. Politicians will kick the can down the road until we're all broke)

- We will announce Iraq is Mission Accomplished all over again, and no one will notice

- Afghanistan gets worse (again, this is like saying the sun is likely to rise in the east); we don't change anything, still say 'progress is being made', and 2014 is a nice possible exit date.

- The World Will Not End (http://www.alamongordo.com/prophecies_for_2011.html)

- California will ask for a Federal bailout to help cover budget problems; they will get it. Other states may follow suit. Munis will take a bath.

- 1 or 2 major retailers declare bankruptcy; who? Not sure. I still think there's a lot of overcapacity and this christmas is going to put a few chains in a position to shut a lot of locations.

- Oil ends year around $100 a barrel

- BP equity will be back at $55+; BAC will be at $20 or more, and Citi (C) will still be sucking ass in the single digits;

- 2011 will be the warmest year on record; however, Global Warming as a political issue will fall to a new low as an area of personal concern for voters around the world.

- Brazil becomes a particularly hot item for investment; also, countries outside BRIC become far more interesting and eventually a little overheated

- Google and Apple stock both pullback a bit; whereas other cyclical tech stocks have a bumper year. Microsoft, despite doing almost nothing especially new or innovative, gets a 20% boost.

-UK Psychics are 100% wrong about everything in 2011 except those having to do with either football, royal weddings, or football divorces.

http://www.psychics.co.uk/prediction/predictionsfor2011.html

This does not sound original. I seem to have heard this before, well before March 2009. Even the break up map seems somewhat familiar.

"More people are going to be put to work this summer."
-Vice President Joe Biden, White House briefing, June 17, 2010

Biden's quote was self evidently true (by your own numbers), though if you change it to the "summer of jobs" and imply a boom recovery in jobs I agree that didn't happen. These numbers are also skewed by temporary Census workers. The number of jobs added, excluding temp Census hires and fires are[1]:
March +160,000 [2]
April + 247,000 [2]
May +21,000 (most recent data point when Biden made the comment)
June +50,000
July +77,000
August +113,000

Joshua Keating - "By August, private-sector job growth had had fallen by two-thirds." The average of Mar/Apr/May was 142,667. Average of June/July/August was 80,000, a 44% drop, not a two-thirds drop. Either way Biden's comment is accurate and relative to the most recent point he was working off of the summer performed relatively well.

The White House has been a bit too bullish with labels like "Recovery Summer", since really we need +200,000 or more jobs per month to be recovering. The jobs recovery has certainly not happened yet[3].

[1] http://www.bls.gov/ces/cescensusworkers.pdf
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?bls "Total Nonfarm Employment, SA"
[2]http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/05/temporary-help-and-diffusion-index.html
[3] For those interested (again ex-census, seasonally adjusted):
September +53,000
October +177,000 (preliminary)
November +40,000 (preliminary)

Would somebody please tell me why the media pay any attention to that nitwit Meghan McCain, who has no standing whatsoever and who, astonishingly, might actually be the dumbest member of her family?

What about the prediction of a double dip recession in the U.S.? The U.S. was never even close to a double dip. I think it was more political fear mongering ahead of the election.

JMS44444

"meghan mccain continues to astonish by her nitwittery." Dumber than a bucket of hair, as they say in Houston and Austin and them thar parts... Dumber than her mommy and more stubborn than her unpredictable daddy.

But Biden and his incessent prattle about everything and anything makes one pine for the days of the buzzer on Jeopardy or anything to keep that fool from disgracing himself further. Sadly, next to John Kerry, Biden doesn't look all that insufferable and hypocritical---John the total ASS does make everyone nearby except Al Gore look better in comparison.

"We're gonna be totally out of there" meaning Afghanistan is Biden's latest adventure in prognostications... After promising more jobs during "Jobs Summer,' you'd think some sort of inner light would flash when he gets too foolish for words, but no.... no light coming from Biden except a flashing red 'danger zone'.....

All i want to say is that it is amazing how wrong people can get things!

These people are meant to be the ones who know what is going on and yet they can make such awful predictions. Isn't it shocking?

cool story bro

18 aralik ehliyet sinavi sonuclari

The Last Days were pre-ordained by our Creator, -the One God to Whom all sincere peoples of the Mother Earth pray- since the Beginning, including the One World Government (control of the national/international economies are a good start), run by the personification of the Dark Side Of The Force, as a Divine Lesson for all the generations to come of what happens when man is Allowed to run things on his own for two thousand years, while progressively denying the SUPERNATURAL SPIRITUAL LAWS of the Light from which we are Emanating, and the Representation of that Light which WILLFULLY visited this dimension for awhile (as a Male).
The pieces are all coming together, IN OUR LIFETIMES: the murder of our beloved Nature all over the Mother, greedy, corrupt and SATANIC, EVIL men in the highest levels of our beloved nation and all the others (including the SPIRITUALLY-DEAD, LUKEWARM, STATE-LICENSED, ORGANIZED “CHURCHES, HERE AND EVERYWHERE), wars and rumors of war, the False Prophet: the poop, I mean, pope (or the next- the prophesied Times are here), the Two Witnesses (Malachi 4:5-6, Rev. 11: 3-13), and Jesus' and His Angelic Warriors’ fierce PHYSICAL Return (He's invisible for now- TALK DIRECTLY TO HIM, OR DON’T, NOW BEING MADE AWARE OF THE CHOICE).
Pray for the young: they are about to inherit Armageddon.

Namaste, Ed, South Texas Shaman (http://southtexasshaman.trippod.com).

This piece was refused publication by Americanchronicle.com
Because it does have critical opinion about Obams, thei mid term defeat and Exposure of India.
Pls read, share and comment.

The Author.

Obama went to beggars for begging jobs!

After the humiliating defeat in the mid term elections, Obama flee to a country who is housing the highest number of Deprived, who make up majority of, not only India but, the world as a whole.
It was very perplexing to see Mr. and Mrs. president dancing in the land of the monkeys like clown, to forget their defeat. One must wonder if they could not find a better way to overcome their grueling defeat.

Logical Question to be posed here is that; Do the Democrats really think that Americans are so dumb that they would not understand that a country who is littered with the poverty, except in it’s Parliament, Presidential Palace, 5 star Hotels and Bollywood, can not be of any use to US or its people? They took the American Jobs away at much cheaper price, so how can they create jobs in USA, which would be much more costlier and against their own interest.

According to reports, Obama has signed 10 billion dollars agreements with Indian government, which are future options and would stretch over a long period of time. US, on the contrary, is spending more billions in a month in Iraq and Afghanistan. How significant would these contracts be in this background is no brainer. It is absolutely devious, deceptive and ridiculous.

It may, although, be contended that it is a biased approach towards India, but the facts have to be told howsoever bitter they might be. India is a country who has annexed several of its smaller neighbors, she is killing minorities, like Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, and even Low cast Hindus.

Hundred of Kashmiri are being killed every day. Kashmir has been garrisoned by half a million soldiers, who are committing heinous crimes against the innocent unarmed people of Kashmir for the last 65 years.

India is the only country in the world who has the highest number of secessionist movements raging thought its provinces and occupied territories. According to some published reports, there are about 90 such movements. Some of the areas, where these insurgencies are raging, have never been under the full control of the federal government. Police and other law enforcing agencies have no presence there and never had any writ there.

It is the first country who violated the non atomic make up of the region. It is the only country who has killed millions of Muslims at the time of partition and then killed thousands of Sikhs at Golden temple; the holiest shrine of Sikhs. It got hundreds of thousands Sri Lankans killed for a very long time by Tamil Tigers.( in an Indian sponsored and funded terrorism).

It is the country who broke Pakistan into two by creating Bangladesh by military intervention. It is the country who invaded Pakistan three times in 65 years. It is also training and funding Bluchistan Liberation Army’s terrorists operating in Pakistani territories. It has repeatedly reneged on scores of UN resolutions. It has several areas of Pakistani territories under its illicit occupation since the partition. It is the only county in the world who has disputes with almost all of its neighbors.

It is the only country who is meddling in the affairs of all its neighbors, like China via Tibet, Pakistan via BLA (Bluchistan Liberation army), Sri Lanka via Tamil Tigers and so on. India flushed out the Buddhism from its territory and planted in China and then gave asylum to Dalai Lama, perpetuating a constant headache for China.

Contrarily, she is expecting to be the permanent member of the security council, projecting herself as the emerging power of the world, after China, and Regional Power of Asia. It has the lunatic dream of even confronting China militarily and surpassing it economically. This costly trip of Obamas to a human wasteland should be condemned with all intensity as the huge cost of this trip could have been used to feed hundred of thousands needy back home, who are jobless for long time.

According to the latest economic data, India is at the verge of collapsing and economic declination due to several factors. Economic indicators show that the meager growth, which India experienced in past few decades, has eroded and it is on constant decline. India is a country which is forcing several diametrically different people, to live under India tyranny of Akhand Bharat.
To name a few such people are; Goans, Sikhs, Nixal Baris, Bengalis and so on. Ironically, the current prime minister of India, Man Mohan Singh, has categorically accepted this reality that the militants seems to be wining and would take over the country soon.

India would disintegrate soon as its constitution is frivolous, unrealistic and illogical from any conceivable point of view. It is just a matter of decade or two for its balkanization. If history is any guide, it seems to be confirming this notion as well. It is unable to feed its population, military is the most inept, illogically intellectualized which renders it (non military) bunch of killers, the nationalistic tendencies are growing in group/nation centric fashion; which are intrinsically anti Indian union. Hindu extremism is at its height and most violent. Minority are grossly mistreated, under privileged and kept so forcibly due to cast and class system.

The apologists for India and the antagonists of China, such as Fareed Zakaria (the host of GPS--Gaffe Par Sans), are constantly twisting the facts; depicting the rise of china worrying many countries of the area. They are misleading the American Intelligentsia, Academicians and Policy makers alike that these countries are looking towards USA for counter balance in the area against Chinese Influence. This is utter non sense. Most of the countries of the area are very comfortable with China. Mainly because it neither dictates these countries nor does it provide them with the blue print of perceived model government. It also does not conspire against these countries to topple the presumed unfriendly governments. It also does not label countries part of axis of evil. It has not invaded any country in the recent memory on the false pretext of WMD. We all need to be on guard against these distortionists. We should demand the source or rationale of their botched assertions.