The year 2008 will obviously go down as one of the most eventful years in recent history. It was the year that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. It was the year that the Internet replaced print and TV as the driving force in a presidential election. It was the beginning of […]
We are coming to an end of the greatest financial age of sports in history. The twelve years between 1996 and 2008 were years when the money around sports exploded beyond any precedent era. This also means that, going forward, the economics around sports in general will decline, at least for the next 5-8 years […]
As a futurist, I view the financial crisis that exploded last week from a high level, long term perspective. The macro forces that are reshaping our world must be considered when such a crisis occurs. In addition this particular crisis will force us to reevaluate long held economic ideals that may no longer have validity […]
Recently, people have been asking me a lot of questions about the fluctuating price of oil “What is the price of oil going to be?” “Was the recent price spike of $147 a barrel an all-time high that we won’t see again?” And “Will the global economic slowdown drive the price of oil back down […]
Amidst all the chatter and news stories about who said what in the Presidential race and how SUVs have become undesirable, there was a story last week that will be one that 2008 will be remembered for, at least in the scientific community. NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander found ice on Mars!! As long as humanity […]
The tag line of this blog is “A Future Look at Today”. It is not a political blog, nor is this a political column. I have assiduously kept politics out of this space leaving partisan conversations about campaign issues to others. There is a lot of heat around partisan politics and such heat can prevent […]
There have been many cultural changes so far in 2008. Some of these changes are in response to the rapid increase in the price of oil and other commodities. Some of these changes have been due to technological innovations. In both cases new behavior patterns are being established that will, to some degree become permanent […]
In the column “2007/2008” published on January 1, 2008 I made a prediction concerning media that is worth revisiting. At the beginning of the year the entertainment industry was in the middle of the writer’s strike. I wrote: “The writers’ strike in the entertainment business is now two months old. Its’ length, the animosity it […]
In my columns of forecasts for 2008 I made clear and distinct predictions about debt, the housing market and the stock market. Debt On January 1 I wrote: “The key economic word for 2007 and even more so for 2008 will be “debt”. It is debt that is the true economic issue for the individual, […]
Regular readers know that I have long predicted the current price of oil and that we are now moving through Peak Oil These subjects were included in my “Forecast for 2008″ To quote from that January 9, 2008 column: “In 2008, gas will, for a period of time reach $4 on the national level. A […]