The smart analysts refuse to make predictions which is the strategy Economic Undertow will follow. I will instead focus on what is happening in the present that the rest are ignoring.
For those who are prediction- deprived, the following is a smörgåsbord of ‘Brand X’ predictions from other analysts.
Phil’s Stock World looks for a crash that may or may not happen, he’s predicting, not me:
We are still trying to stay on top of things with our $10K to $50K Portfolio but we are stuck dead at $26,000 (virtual net) with 4 bearish positions remaining open. Our deadline for $50K was Jan 21st and it’s not looking good at the moment as this market simply goes up and up every day but I still have the nagging feeling that, the minute we capitulate, we’ll miss a beeline to $50K so it looks like we’ll stick it out over the weekend, although it’s only Tuesday so it may be too early to put on a brave face on bearish bets that clearly are not working at the moment.It does seem to me that what’s going on with copper is a microcosm for what’s going on in the markets. The trading is very thin, the Chinese markets are selling off with the Shanghai down another 1.7% this morning and the Hang Seng off 1% as well. Nonetheless, with London closed and no real price check on the market, copper shot up a nickel to touch $4.31 overnight as the Dollar was knocked down from 80.7 to 78.9 – which used to be considered a major move in a currency but is now considered “Tuesday morning.” It is truly amazing what you can get used to…
Somali Pirates (aka “Rent-A-Rebel”) have seized an fuel tanker, also aiming to drive up oil prices during a thinly traded week (are you seeing a theme here?). Already the return of $3 gas prices has knocked 20% off the value of used SUVs in just one month, but I sure don’t feel sorry for the people who still have them – I was dumbfounded at how many SUVs were selling this year as truly my 6 month-old niece has more of an attention span than the American consumer, who can be burned over and over and over again by the same bad decisions, it seems. “It’s a challenge,” says Adam Lee, president of the family-run Lee Auto Malls dealerships in Maine. “How do you tell a good customer, ‘You paid $32,000, and now it’s only worth $17,000?’” ROFL!!!
Indeed. Here is Doug Kass via Minyanville:
1. In line with consensus, the domestic economy experiences a strong first half, but several factors conspire to produce a weakening second half, which jeopardizes corporate profit growth forecasts.2. Partisan politics cuts into business and consumer confidence and economic growth in the last half of 2011.
3. Rising commodities prices becomes the single greatest concern for the US stock market and economy. Scarcity of water boosts agricultural prices and causes a military confrontation between China and India. The continued effect of global warming, the resumption of swifter worldwide economic growth in 2011, normal population increases and an accelerated industrialization in emerging markets (and the associated water contamination and pollution that follows) contribute importantly to more droughts and the growing scarcity of water, forcing a continued and almost geometric rise in the price of agricultural commodities (which becomes one of the most important economic and stock market themes in 2011). Increased scarcity of water and higher agricultural commodity prices (corn, wheat, beans, etc) not only have broad economic consequences, but they become a destabilizing factor and serve as the basis for a developing powder keg in the relations between China and India.
4. The (stock) market moves sideways during 2011.
While the general consensus forecast is for a rise of about 10% to 15% for the S&P 500 in 2011, the index ends up exactly where it closes the year in 2010. A flat year is a fairly rare occurrence. Since 1900, there have only been six times when the averages recorded a year-over-year price change of less than 3% (plus or minus); 2011 will mark the seventh time.
5. Food and restaurant companies are among the worst performers in the S&P 500. (This surprise is an extension of surprise No. 3.) Several well-known multinational food companies and a host of domestic restaurant chains face margin and earnings pressures as they are unable to pass the violent rise in agricultural costs on to the consumer.6. The shares of asset managers suffer. I expect a series of populist initiatives by the current administration beginning by a frontal assault on mutual fund 12b-1 fees.
7. Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton switch jobs by midyear 2011, 18 months before the 2012 Presidential election.
8. Speaker of the House John Boehner is replaced by Congressman Paul Ryan during the summer. A tearful Boehner proves too dogmatic.
9. A new political party emerges. Screwflation becomes a theme that has broadening economic social and political implications. Similar to its first cousin stagflation, screwflation is an expression of a period of slow and uneven economic growth, but, in addition, it holds the existence of inflationary consequences that have an outsized impact on a specific group.
10. The price of gold plummets by more than $250 an ounce in a four-week period in 2011 and is among the worst asset classes of the new year. The commodity experiences wild volatility in price (on five to 10 occasions, the price has a daily price change of at least $75), briefly trading under $1,050 an ounce during the year and ending the year between $1,100 and $1,200 an ounce.
11. Among the most notable takeover deals in 2011, Microsoft launches a tender offer for Yahoo at $21.50 a share. With the company in play, News Corporation (NWS) follows with a competing and higher bid. The private equity community joins the fray. Microsoft (MSFT) ultimately prevails and pays $24 a share for Yahoo (YHOO).
12. The Internet becomes the tactical nuke of the digital age. Cybercrime likely explodes exponentially as the Web is invaded by hackers. A specific target next year will be the NYSE, and I predict an attack that causes a week-long hiatus in trading and an abrupt slowdown in domestic business activity.
13. The SEC’s insider trading case expands dramatically, reaching much further into the canyons of some of the largest hedge funds and mutual funds, and to several West Coast-based technology companies.
14. There is a peaceful regime change in Iran.
15. China overplays it’s economic hand by implementing multiple tightening and by its unwillingness to allow its currency to appreciate. The region’s GDP climbs by only 5% in 2011.
Doug Kass writes daily for RealMoney Silver, a premium bundle service from TheStreet.com.
1. Municipal bonds; States are facing a $180 billion fiscal hole in 2011, and an additional $120 billion in 2012, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. States and localities face a long-term pension deficit of between $1.2 trillion and $3 trillion, depending on what discount rates you use. Property taxes — a main source of revenue for local governments — are falling and will continue to fall as property values are reassessed and real estate prices sag.2. Rising interest rates; As grisly as the past three years have been on housing and employment, they’ve occurred against a backdrop of record-low interest rates — a spectacular boon that’s blunted the blow.
3. Oil: It was simple math: Gasoline prices rose from $2.29 to $4.05 between early 2007 and mid-2008. The U.S. consumed about 210 billion gallons of the stuff during that period. That’s a $370 billion added tax on consumers.
With oil prices now breaching $90 a barrel — almost 30% higher than a year ago — a similar headwind is gaining momentum.
Should oil break above $100 a barrel, you get a two-for-one sting: Consumers are whacked by higher gas prices, and $100 breaks the psychological threshold of proving this country’s energy policy is abysmal at best.
4. Mad man at the helm; Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has made it clear: He will keep interest rates ungodly low until the economy is out of the woods.
… the Fed is strictly concerned with price inflation, not asset inflation. Price inflation is when the price of goods like food goes up. Asset inflation is when there’s a stock bubble. With the focus on the price of goods, assets can spin wildly out of control as the Fed looks the other way, insisting there’s no inflation while bubbles form and inevitably burst. This is essentially what happened last decade with the housing bubble. Many think it’s a story we’re replaying line for line today.
5. Valuations; When the Fed prints money with abandon, there’s a good chance the valuation of every financial asset will go nuts. Stocks. Bonds. Gold. Houses. Used cars. Everything gets distorted and becomes subject to bubblehood.
On one end, you have investors plowing into bonds, happy to buy the debt of governments, municipalities, and companies for returns that often round to zero. These investors won’t be happy with the outcome. Just wait. At the other end, my colleague Alex Dumortier recently showed a few examples of irrational exuberance creeping back into the stock market, including what he found were high historical valuations, smart investors heading to the sidelines, and good ol’ complacency.
The iron rule of investing is that there’s a perfect negative correlation between returns and excitement. And there’s a lot of excitement in almost every asset class these days.
No. 1. The bull market returns. Actually we’ve already been in a bull market for more than a year. Just take a look at the figures. But in the early stages of a rising equity cycle, no one says it’s a bull market. First they call it a dead-cat bounce. Then they call it a bear-market rally. By the end of 2011, the penny will have dropped. We’ll be officially back in bull territory.No. 2. The alternative-investment industry crashes. The main driver of hedge funds and private-equity funds was the search for yield. With stock markets in the doldrums, interest rates cut to almost nothing, and bond yields at record lows, investors were desperate for any kind of meaningful return on their money. They were willing to listen to slick hedge-fund managers who promised to make 30 percent a year on high velocity yak-hide arbitrage. Next year, interest rates will be rising, and so will bond yield and equity returns.
No. 3. Venture capital returns. The start-up industry took a terrible beating from the dot-com crash. But as a rough rule, a decade is long enough for the financial markets to forget everything. .
No. 4. France gets smoked out in the euro crisis. Somehow France has managed to get itself grouped along with Germany as one of the strong euro nations. But it runs a bigger budget deficit than Italy. It has chronic unemployment and little growth. Crucially, it has the greatest resistance to reform.
No. 5. The Apple Inc. backlash starts. We used to think International Business Machines Corp. was sort of sinister. Then it was Microsoft Corp. But which business today has far too much power, is run by control freaks and puts profits before principles? That’s right. The world’s third-biggest company, measured by market value, is about to discover that the line between cool upstart and ugly monopolist is a very thin one.
No. 6. The German model is back in fashion. The words German and fashion go together about as well as Greece and solvent. But in a world trying to figure out how you get out of a debt crisis, the Rhineland model of capitalism is suddenly going to seem very appealing. Lots of mid-size companies, with huge technical expertise, low debt and skilled workforces exporting niche products to the whole world — that sounds like a pretty good formula for success in the 2010s.
No. 7. Lloyds Banking Group Plc gets broken up.
No. 8. Iceland teaches the world a lesson. Two years ago, every government in the world bought into the idea that you had to bail out your banks. If they collapsed, you would go straight back to the Stone Age. One country defied the consensus. Iceland couldn’t afford to keep its banks going. What happened? There’s been pain, sure, but from next year on the economy should be growing again, inflation is under control and interest rates are coming down. If Iceland keeps recovering, only one conclusion is possible: You don’t need to bail out banks after all.
No. 9. Russia puts the R back in BRIC. We’ve heard a lot about the rising economic power of Brazil, India and China. A lot less has been heard about the R in the BRICs – – Russia. It tends to get dismissed as a raw materials supplier with an authoritarian government. But it’s trying to recreate itself as a technology powerhouse — look at the plans to create a new Silicon Valley in the Moscow suburb of Skolkovo. Crazy? Remember, this was the first country to put a man into space.
No. 10. A backlash against Christmas e-cards.
(Matthew Lynn is a Bloomberg News columnist and the author of “Bust,” a book on the Greek debt crisis. The opinions expressed are his own.)
Estimable Dave Rosenberg opines by way of Automatic Earth:
1. In Barron’s look-ahead piece, not one strategist sees the prospect for a market decline. This is called group-think. Moreover, the percentage of brokerage house analysts and economists to raise their 2011 GDP forecasts has risen substantially. Out of 49 economists surveyed, 35 say the U.S. economy will outperform the already upwardly revised GDP forecasts, only 14 say we will underperform. This is capitulation of historical proportions.2. The weekly fund flow data from the ICI showed not only massive outflows, but in aggregate, retail investors withdrew a RECORD net $8.6 billion from bond funds during the week ended December 15 (on top of the $1.7 billion of outflows in the prior week).
3. Investors Intelligence now shows the bull share heading up to 58.8% from 55.8% a week ago, and the bear share is up to 20.6% from 20.5%. So bullish sentiment has now reached a new high for the year and is now the highest since 2007 ? just ahead of the market slide.
4. It may pay to have a look at Dow 1929-1949 analog lined up with January 2000. We are getting very close to the May 1940 sell-off when Germany invaded France.
5. What about the S&P 500 dividend yield, and this comes courtesy of an old pal from Merrill Lynch who is currently an investment advisor. Over the course of 2010, numerous analysts were saying that people must own stocks because the dividend yields will be more than that of the 10-year Treasury. But alas, here we are today with the S&P 500 dividend yield at 2% and the 10-year T-note yield at 3.3%.
6. The equity market in gold terms has been plummeting for about a decade and will continue to do so. When measured in Federal Reserve Notes, the Dow has done great.
7. As Bob Farrell is clearly indicating in his work, momentum and market breadth have been lacking. The number of stocks in the S&P 500 that are making 52-week highs is declining even though the index continues to make new 52-week highs.
8. Stocks are overvalued at the present levels. For December, the Shiller P/E ratio says stocks are now trading at a whopping 22.7 times earnings! .
9. The potential for a significant down-leg in home prices is being underestimated. The unsold existing inventory is still 80% above the historical norm, at 3.7 million. And that does not include the ‘shadow’ foreclosed inventory. According to some superb research conducted by the Dallas Fed, completing the mean-reversion process would entail a further 23% decline in real home prices from here.
10. Arguably the most understated, yet significant, issue facing both U.S. economy and U.S. markets is the escalating fiscal strains at the state and local government levels, particularly those jurisdictions with uncomfortably high pension liabilities.
The estimable Bruce Krasting sticks his neck waaaaaaaaay out there and avoids predictions while writing an alternative narrative:
Oh boy is 2011 going to be an exciting year! Some things that I think might happen:-Volatility is going up across the board. If you have the stomach for the swings that are coming across all markets there is a ton of money to be made; balls and timing are all that are necessary. The markets will create dozens of opportunities to make and lose.
-There will be 50 days with a swing in the S&P greater than 1%. There will be 10 days where gold swings $50. There will be two days with a drop greater than 100 bucks. Most of the big moves will be down moves. Bonds will not be spared the volatility.
-Gold will be higher a year from now but off its peak. At some time in the fall, gold will be near 1,800 and the New York Times will do a front-page story that gold is on its way to 2,000. That will be the high point of the year.
-Copper will continue to rise. This metal will benefit as the poor man’s gold. Why buy an ounce of something for $1,600 when you can have a whole pound of something else for only $5?
-The US bond market is in for a heck of a year. The 30-year will trade at BOTH 3% and 5%. Higher rates will come early in the year, then the deflation trade will come back into vogue.
-Spain will be the next sovereign debtor that falls prey to the market. This will happen before the end of the 1st Q. The package to bail them out will exceed $500b. This will exhaust the EU resources.
-The IMF will contribute $125b to the Spanish bailout. The US portion of this will be $25b. Republican Senators and Congressman go nuts. The American people will side with them.
-The ECB will be forced to issue bonds that are joint and several debt of the EU members. This development will stabilize the EU temporarily, but it will be hated in Germany. The amount of the new issuance of these bonds will be small. The program will be terminated in 2012.
-The dollar versus the Euro will be all over the lot. The low for EURUSD will be ~1.17. The really big surprise is that toward the end of the year the Euro will be pushing 1.50.
-The CHF (Swiss franc) will be like copper. It will attract investors as there is no good alternative. Before June EURCHF will trade below 90.
-The market will finally wake up to the fact that the YEN is not a good store of wealth. The continuing argument will be, “Yeah the Yen stinks, but everything is worse so it should be okay”. Wrong. The Yen is a short.
-The US will have a full year deficit of 1.4 trillion dollars. This depressing reality will hang on the US economy/markets.
-QE2 will be the last QE we see. The program will end (on schedule) on 6/30. Perversely, long-term interest rates will rise as long as QE continues. When the program is finished rates will begin a rapid decline. .
-The high for the S&P will occur before June. The S&P will fall short of 1,500. The low will be 1,100.
-Oil will rise to $130 in the next six months. It will be above $100 at the end of the year.
-China’s inflation rate will continue to rise. Food will be the primary driver. The central government will respond with monetary tightening and an acceleration of the Yuan appreciation. It will not work. Inflation will push 7%.
-Brazil will continue to shine as a resource rich country that runs a trade surplus and has low budget deficits. The surprise of the year will be Argentina. Food will be the reason.
-The US will wind down its presence in Iraq. With every step we take out the door domestic violence will rise. Iran will assume a larger roll in the south (Basra). This will not go over well with the US.
-Kim Jong-Il will die. His son will take over. The heir is a nut, there will be more military exercises that results in shells landing on S. Korea soil. China will make public statements that it is trying to bring order; behind the scenes they will be applauding the chaos.
-Obama’s popularity will continue to fall. The legislative “successes” at the end of 2010 will convert to a series of failures. There will be no new stimulus. Portions of the health care legislation will be dialed back.
-Obama will propose a means test for Social Security in his State of the Union Address. Retirees who are living the high-life (Warren Buffet types) are going to have their SS checks cut to the bone.
-The 2% reduction on worker contributions to Social Security will be extended and expanded to 3% for 2012. Rates will not go up in future years. Social Security will have to be gutted as a result.
-2011 will be a stock pickers market. Index investing will see a bad year. Some of the darlings of 2011 like AAPL and NFLX will not fare so well.
-There will be at least three more ‘Flash Crashes’. The SEC will launch another investigation into how this could happen. The conclusion will be that ETF’s and how dealers manage them are responsible for the liquidity problems in individual stock names. There is no solution to this problem. The market will be on edge looking for the next mini crash.
-Meredith Whitney will be proven wrong in her forecast that 50-100 munis go chapter 9 this year. The process to insolvency takes much longer than she has anticipated. Only 11 munis will make a chapter filing. The rest will be pushed to the brink in 2012.
-The center of attention will move away from California as the most bankrupt state. In his State of the State address in January, New York’s new Governor Andrew Cuomo will fess up to the fact that for the past year of so NY has been burying its problems.
-Unemployment will not go down. The average for the year will be above 10%. The number of workers who leave the system will rise to 20mm. These workers will find part-time jobs that pay cash. The new day-workers will compete will illegals for employment. Social tensions will be the result.
-The Chevy volt will not sell well. Boeing will be unable to complete a single Dreamliner. GM will trade below $30, Boeing will hit the low $50’s.
-The Singapore dollar will be the strongest currency on the globe in 2011.
-Apple will not come up with a new product this coming year. The rest of the consumer tech manufacturers will gain some market share.
-Headline inflation will rise a bit. It will push through 2%. Those numbers are meaningless.
-Much to my chagrin and surprise Tim Geithner will not be replaced as Treasury Secretary. He will continue to do a very mediocre job for us. He will be replaced in January of 2012.
-Comcast will complete the acquisition of NBC/CNBC. One of the first acts will be to fire Mark Haines. Nothing will help.
There will be violent weather episodes all over the globe. The La Nina condition that is now dominating global weather is the strongest in 50 years.
-Fannie and Freddie will be merged. Out of the ashes will come a good bank and a bad bank. The bad bank will hold 2.5 trillion of questionable mortgages.
-Washington’s other mortgage lender FHA will run into troubles.
-There will not be a failure of a government bond auction. But the coverage for each issuance will grow smaller. China, Russia and Brazil will reduce their holdings of US reserves.
-Mortgage Gate will die as a headline story.
-The narco violence in Mexico will expand to many more cities. Tourism will be hurt as a result. Some of the violence will pass over our border. Anti immigration attitudes will expand. Because the low-end economy will remain in the dumpster the actual number of illegal aliens will decline by more than 1mm. This will add to the RE woes in some US areas. It will stress the countries that they originated from as $ remittances decline.
-Interest rates will be higher throughout the year for corporate bonds and Munis. This will bring a reversal of the mania to buy dividend stocks. Those who thought that this investment strategy would work for them will be disappointed.
-Jon Hilsenrath will write an article for the Wall Street Journal that is actually critical of the Fed. The unpopularity of the Fed will rise to such a level that Jon will have no choice but to follow suit.
-The Fed will come under attack from all sides. They are truly in a no-win situation. Unemployment will continue to rise while inflation rises and the dollar declines.
-ZIRP will be with us for yet another year. Bernanke will not let go of this loser policy.
-Social unrest will become visible in America in 2011. There will be demonstrations in many major cities. Some will turn violent.
Have a great year!!
The US:
Roubini Global Economics expects gross domestic economic growth of 2.7pc, down from its estimate of 2.8pc for this year. Inflation will remain muted at 1.4pc compared with 1.6pc for this year. The growth, a sharp contrast to the 2.4pc contraction of 2009, won’t be enough to bring down unemployment, though. Roubini is forecasting it stays around 9.5pc. Even if the US economy could deliver growth of 4pc, it would still need half a decade of that to cut unemployment closer to 5pc, his firm reckons. Roubini is also not optimistic that there will be any agreement in Congress over the next two years on how to tackle the country’s deficit. Unless bond investors force the issue, that will be a job for whoever wins the next presidential election, he says.
The Eurozone:
It’s in the eurozone that the greatest risks to global growth lie, according to Roubini. What he characterises as a “muddle-through” approach is not sustainable and more countries will eventually have to restructure their debts, he reckons. Despite a forecast that the German economy will slow to growth of 2.2pc in 2011 from an estimated 3.5pc this year, the pressure will grow on Europe’s largest economy to adopt a very stimulative fiscal policy to compensate for the weakness of many of its eurozone neighbours. Europe’s second-tier of heavyweights – France and Italy – will grow just 1.3pc and 0.8pc respectively, according to Roubini.
Asia:
Tensions between the region and the US will remain over currency policy. Roubini doesn’t expect any significant devaluation of the yuan by China. That, in turn, will encourage other Asian exporters, such as South Korea, to keep their currencies weak because no one wants to lose market share. Roubini expects Chinese gross domestic product to slow to 8.7pc next year from the 10pc he has pencilled in this year. At 8.8pc India’s growth will almost match the 9pc enjoyed this year. However, all the major emerging economies face a tough battle against inflation as a combination of their own internal growth and the liquidity unleashed by the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing drives up prices.
Here’s some tidbits from Jim Hansen of Ravenna Capital Management. You have to sign up for this:
More brave souls willing to predict the price of oil.In an article last week titled “Chart Watchers See a Crude Reawakening” the Wall Street Journal had these brave calls on the price of oil for next year.
“Mr. Ross said he wouldn’t be surprised to see $100 oil in 2011. The $103 level will face significant resistance, he said, because it represents a 61.8% Fibonnaci retracement from the 2008 peak to trough. Fibonacci followers note that until a market retraces more than 61.8% of the previous decline, it is still governed by that downtrend. But shooting higher than $103 would imply that oil has entered a new primary uptrend.
Other technicians are even more bullish. Mary Ann Bartels, technical research analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said in a note to clients earlier this week that crude oil could surge to $118 to $120 a barrel in 2011.” WSJ 2010-12-22
“Fibonacci followers…”? Sounds like a new religion and given how most people invest it probably is. The $118 to $120 a barrel range in 2011 is a little more gutsy call than $103/barrel.
If that $120 level is reached hold on to your investing hats because that is well above the 4-5% of GDP level that experts like Steven Kopits have said historically induces recessions.
Now you would think the former president of a major oil company would know better than to predict price but it appears not. “The former president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, says Americans could be paying $5 for a gallon of gasoline by 2012.” Since that would add another $2/gallon to the current price it would take approximately $750 million (3/4 of a billion) more out of the U.S. economy per day than the current $3/gallon average price. That can best be described as an anti stimulus program.
“The price of fuel is up 13.6% from last December and 76% higher from December 2008, according to a new study from the Oil Price Information Service.” The report also indicated that households in Montana and Mississippi will be paying more than 12% of income for gasoline in December. It is a long drive to the nearest Wal-Mart so that will hurt.
But even more important is that if gasoline does climb to $5/gallon diesel fuel (remember diesel sells at premium to gasoline), heating oil and importantly for the airline industry jet fuel will have also climbed to equivalent levels. The resulting economic pain will run much deeper than just the $750 million in additional gasoline costs. It will easily be a $1 billion per day tax on the U.S. economy and this is a tax increase neither the President nor Congress can repeal.
Send an email to: jim.hansen-at-kmsfinancial.com and put ‘subscribe’ on the subject line. You won’t regret it!
This collection is from ASPO USA:
–Arthur Berman, petroleum geologist and board member of ASPO-USA predicts:I believe that oil prices in the US will average $88-92 a barrel in 2011 but may climb toward $100 by the end of the year, while natural gas prices in the US will average $4.00-4.25 in 2011 but may climb toward $5.00 by the end of the year. I believe that much of the “shale gale” euphoria will begin to unravel in 2011 and there may be some important distress situations or even bankruptcies that will underscore the risk of these ventures. I suspect that the rush to “liquids-rich” gas plays in the US will be exposed as low-resource potential ventures rather than another Saudi Arabia of crude oil. I imagine that the miracle of Chinese growth will begin to show some weakness in 2011 as state-directed economics becomes unstable. The PBC has been artificially keeping inflation low by buying dollars and creating bonds to keep the money supply low. The loans for big infrastructure projects will not uniformly perform. This cannot last. True inflation is higher than revealed and, when it is known, will show the vulnerability of the economy because the rural sector is not sharing prosperity with the urban sector. Sovereign debt problems in Europe will continue to create instability in the global economy. The EU concept is flawed because a single currency does not allow weak economies to devalue their currency.
– Gail Tverberg, actuary and writer, is editor of The Oil Drum sez:
I expect 2011 will be a year of recession and increasing layoffs. It may start off reasonably well, but then an attempted price rise of oil to, say, $120 barrel, will prove to be too much for most economies. There will be countries and smaller political subdivisions (state, city) that take steps to restructure their debt with longer maturities. All of this will drive interest rates up, and make credit harder to find. The recession will worsen as credit contraction ensues. Governments will scramble to try to keep each other and banks from failing. In some cases they will be successful; in other cases they will not be.
– Lindsay Curren is editor of Transition Voice, the magazine covering peak oil, climate change, economic crisis and the Transition movement response. She sez:
The US will fail to produce a meaningful energy policy even as energy is increasingly understood by the people as a key input, the cost of which threatens to cripple family economies. As federal and political solutions fail further, the economy continues to limp along, with more and more folks out of work, causing severe local and state cutbacks and even state and municipal bankruptcies. And this gets to the crux of the cultural shift that I see. Increasingly unemployed people will hobble social services, exposing a culture in clear decline with no plan to address it. The federal government and centralized business will have less and less relevance. In response, the unemployed and underemployed “underclass” will either take re-localization to the next level, getting very creative and energized as they craft compelling and imaginative yet practical local solutions including bartering, more local currencies, more mass transit and carpooling usage, organic community building, more food production, and simpler local living. But the will has to be there even as we feel exhausted and unsure and resources are limited.
– Ilargi, The Automatic Earth (and Nicole Foss at a remove) say:
I’ll now venture to name 2011 The Year of the Stone that Grinds the Family Jewels. Well, either that, or, as my writing partner Stoneleigh phrases it: The Year of The Margin Call. We can extend and pretend only so long. We can hand over only so many years of the people’s future earnings to the banks. That is, before someone becomes suspicious of what we do. The realization that there is simply no way we can pay down our debts, whether we’re in Ireland, California or Japan, will dawn in 2011, no matter what stories are spun in capital cities and TV studios. It’s high time to get out of the way of the wave that’s-a-gonna-be-a-comin’, and no, timing the market is NOT the main concern, even as finance types would have you believe it is. It’s getting out of the way of the wave that should be your main concern.
– Charles A. Hall and David J. Murphy. Professor Hall is a systems ecologist at SUNY-ESF, an affiliate of Syracuse University. Murphy is a graduate student in environmental science and a contributor to The Oil Drum.
We predict (with relatively little certainty assigned to it) that there will continue to be (for a while) a mild economic recovery, which will increase the demand for oil, and thus require the increased use of higher-priced oil. This will eventually require that 10 percent or so of the US GDP will go to the price of energy, which, as in the past, will lead to an economic downturn which will lead, in time, into the same cycle again. While we are not sure of the details of timing or prices we think that Jean Laherrere’s and Colin Campbell’s concept of the “undulating plateau” will continue to describe the US (and European) economies for the forseeable future – at least until serious peak oil and declining EROI kicks in.
– Tom Whipple is editor of Peak Oil Review.
It looks to me as if the coal/power shortage in China is continuing to spread and will get much worse in the next two months. Beijing’s only possible short-term response is to import as much more energy in the form of oil, coal, and natural gas as they can, thus driving the oil prices above $100 a barrel in the next few months. The Wall Street consensus that China’s oil imports will fall to a 6 percent increase this year seems much too low when you factor in the need to grow at 8-10 percent, replenish stocks, build a strategic reserve, and cope with the growing coal shortage. The likelihood that we will see another 2008 type oil price spike in the next six months seems to be growing every day.
– Christine Patton is co-chair of Transition OKC and author of the Peak Oil Hausfrau Blog.
Not only have American social networks become sadly deteriorated, but so have the skills needed to support them: the fundamental ability to build and maintain the healthy long-term relationships that are critical for community success. Just like planting a garden or cooking from scratch, these skills have to be learned and practiced, and they have to work well in order for coalescing community groups to stay together rather than fall apart. In 2011, community facilitators will increase their focus on helping groups of people simply learn how to get along.
– Ron Swenson, ASPO-USA Board of Directors has this prediction:
Solar: Solar manufacturer shipments more than doubled from 2009 to 2010. I predict that world production of solar energy systems will double again this coming year. A quarter of the growth will come from PV (photovoltaics) and the balance of growth will come from large solar thermal electric projects being installed in the US southwest and other parts of the world. Oil: As a consequence of the drilling moratorium imposed by the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon disaster, the USA will experience oil shortages in 2011 or 2012. (A steady supply from the Gulf has been dependent on new wells filling in as production from older wells declines.) Thoughts of seeking satisfaction of market demand from sources more remote than the Gulf must take into account the longer trip time that would be required for oil tankers. Lacking excess capacity, the global tanker fleet is unlikely to be able to respond, even if other oil suppliers (Africa, Middle East) could be imagined to increase their production.
– Bart Anderson, teacher, journalist and technical writer, is co-editor of Energy Bulletin and active in Transition Palo Alto sez:
I’m looking at two things for 2011. 1) If the WikiLeaks phenomenon grows, we will see the release of documents that confirm what we have been saying about energy shortfalls, corporate domination of governments, and foreign policies aimed at control of resources. 2) There will be continued government cutbacks in pensions and social services in industrialized countries, such as the US, UK, Ireland, Spain and Greece. In France this year, millions demonstrated and went on strike. Popular protests such as these could change the political landscape.
– Richard Heinberg, author of The Party’s Over, Blackout and Peak Everything sez:
I hate making predictions. The world situation is so complex now with demand and supply factors going all directions short-term, so that even if we know the long-term trend (depletion and decline) it’s really hard to make a meaningful one-year forecast. Okay, so, that said, here’s a shot in the dark: Asia-Pacific coal prices will rise at least 20 percent from their current level during 2011.
– Estimable Jeffrey J. Brown, independent petroleum geologist sez:
No matter what specific years that one picks as the starting and ending points, the period from the late Nineties to the end of this decade was characterized by a double-digit average long-term rate of increase in average annual oil prices. For example, from 1998 to 2008 the average rate of increase in US spot crude oil prices was about 20 percent per year. However, what I find interesting is the progression in three year-over-year annual price declines in the 1997 to 2009 time period: down to $14 in 1998, down to $26 in 2001 and down to $62 in 2009. Note that each successive year-over-year price decline was to a level that was about twice the level reached during the prior decline. If this pattern holds, the next year-over-year price decline would bring us down to an average annual oil price of about $120, in the context of a long-term average double-digit rate of increase in annual oil prices, which is what we are seeing in 2010, versus 2009.
– Raymond De Young, associate professor of environmental psychology and planning, University of Michigan sez:
Rob Hopkins’s application of Alexander’s -A Pattern Language‖ to Transition Town initiatives will be accepted as a coherent way to organize and disseminate the emerging insights from the many small experiments being conducted. As an -open source‖ framework, this language will grow organically. Far-reaching ideas (e.g., sacredness as an essential and central feature of all community transitions, Brownlee, 7 Nov 2010), once tested and found true and useful, become new patterns for practitioners to consider for adoption in their community.
– John Michael Greer, author of The Long Descent and The Ecotechnic Future sez:
Washington DC, 15 December 2011: The blue-ribbon panel of economists tasked by the White House with finding the cause of this spring’s record-breaking spike in oil prices has just released its preliminary report. The panel, chaired by former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, dismissed the suggestion that “peak oil” was responsible for the runup in prices, which briefly saw petroleum at $233 a barrel. The report states instead that speculation was to blame, and credited prompt action by the administration for the subsequent plunge in prices that brought prices back down to today’s price of $68 a barrel, a new low for the year. In other news, a White House spokesman angrily rejected claims that this summer’s stock market crash had anything to do with the price of oil, and insisted that it would have only a minor impact on the nation’s economy…
– Debbie Cook is president of the board of Post-Carbon Institute and former mayor of Huntington Beach, CA. sez:
When the witches of Delaware attempt to cast their spell on big-ag ethanol subsidies, the wizards of ADM will exorcise the Tea Party from energy politics. Put another way, corporate America will turn momma grizzlies into teddy bears.
– Sharon Astyk, ASPO-USA Board of Directors, author of Depletion and Abundance and Independence Days
There is every reason to believe that we will see a food-price run-up similar to the one in 2008 in the coming year, making absolutely clear exactly how tightly food and energy prices are intertwined. Although the number of the world’s malnourished briefly fell below 1 billion this year, the number will rise again above it.
– Tad Patzek, chair of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin sez:
To arrive at my most important predictions for 2011, I have attempted to be insanely optimistic and skip the usual peak-everything stuff. The Happy New Year of 2011 will see a thorough public discussion of what needs to be done to make the US a more resilient society and economy. The federal government and Congress will start working together on the development of a massive national electrified railroad system to transport goods and people. We will come off our high horse and stop hallucinating about building bullet-train tracks in a railroad system that is decidedly mid-twentieth century or earlier. Many cities across the US will embark on the crash investment in light rail and other alternatives to cars.
Subsidies for corn, soybean, wheat and rice will be repealed and replaced with a thoughtful program of developing a robust, distributed system to produce a wide variety of healthy whole foods for all. The administration and Congress will wake up to the fact that an unhealthy, obese and generally uneducated population will require an insanely expensive healthcare system that will fail if the root causes of poor health are not eliminated.
Our schools will hire science teachers who live the practice and theory of science, not merely the theory of teaching. Many families across the US will dump game stations, idiotic TV, and iPhones in exchange for conversations and books. Neighborhoods will again become centers of civic activity and common thinking. We will occasionally stop and talk to the homeless, instead of giving them a dollar or a dirty look. Economists will discover that the Earth is spherical and finite, not an infinite mathematical plane with infinitely substitutable resources. Those of us who have animals and children will pet both and smile. Republicans will occasionally talk to the rest of us, and we will respond with kindness.
Right!
What is happening under our noses is the emergence of the idea of ‘resources’ in an economic gestalt that has not felt a need to recognize it before. This itself has a cost that has not been budgeted that must be added to the cost emerging of the resources themselves. We now become ‘hardware’ rather than software people. This is an idea that doesn’t currently exist in 21st century America with its scaffolds of entitlements. What is desired above all other things is a paradigm that can put a value on resources that the establishment can profitably live with, which is an impossible contradiction to resolve.
Another ‘meme of the now’ is the collapse of the post- Andy Warhol fashion universe of ‘fab’ and ‘trend’ that goes nowhere and provides nothing but a useless distraction. It has heretofore written the roles that all must play. Unfortunately, the unattractive ‘unemployed’ and ‘foreclosed upon’ and the ‘living in despair’ roles are becoming corrosive to all the rest: the ‘fab’ roles that basically pimp more and more waste. We cannot waste anymore and must figure out a way to be serious rather than flippant. The upshot is a new kind of politics that is more serious, which is turning from the Warhol model of empty- suit fronts for business interests.
Things matter now.
The new trend is ruin and poverty. How does one make that anything other than what it is, something deadly serious as a heart attack. Accompanying ruin is creeping repudiation of obligations. This may or may not gain traction in 2011 but the gravitational attraction that walking away exerts will pull in all directions, perhaps in Ireland first but what happens next?
Along with the ghost of Warhol goes the shades of Ayn Rand and the self- rationalizing neo- liberals. If any group deserves its onrushing discredit, it is this one. The denouement is all that is lacking but their doom is linked to the flippancy behind which they can pose. Whether this year or another is the end for them the outcome is inevitable. Bernanke is their champion; everything done in his name for the benefit of his neo- lib, wiseguy friends has been lost to the run- up in crude prices and decline in bonds.
After Bernanke comes who … or what, exactly? This is where finance creeps right at the lip of the abyss, talking the ‘recovery’ talk but shitting in their pants.
Nothing lasts forever and the shock of mondernist ‘new’ has grown old and moldy. Modernity reeks of failure, whether it is hyperinflating China, the rotting Phoenix and Las Vegas suburbs or in the canyons of lower Manhattan. The surprise is that modernistas are still hanging around but one can almost feel the nervous sweat that accumulates around the collective collar as the noose tightens.