best wishes for 2010

When the shoe bomber, aka Richard Reid forced all of us to take off our footwear at the airport I joked with a friend, saying "underwear is next." Although I could stand up here and claim magic powers -with witnesses no less-, this one was so predictable I will refrain from saying, I told you so.

So now we will be forced to take off our underwear to pass through security, or submit to a machine that can do it for us. Here is one example of technological progress. But before we get too cynical, it is perhaps good to note that this technology advance may not a bad idea. Here is a chance for all perverts and pedophiles to get a legitimate job at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Hopefully this will be enough stimulation for them to keep them off the streets.

You may wonder what is in store for 2010? No just a new year, but a new decade. If the previous one was a disappointment, be prepared for more of the same. Some things are just too obvious.

-The recession isn't over yet. Another dip is coming. Don't believe the Wall Street hype. These guys have been wrong before.

That reminds me of the PBS interview I saw last night where the guest speaker said, the Wall Street guys think of themselves as survivors, not as people who were rescued. That much is true. But then he added something which is really quite funny. He said, survivors, like a cancer survivor. And there you have it folks. The disease is coming back. I am sure that is not what the speaker intended (or did he?) but it is a very fitting metaphor. A cancer survivor. Who survives cancer I would ask? Only those who haven't seen the end of their remission yet.

-Even if we recover, or I should say, especially if we recover, another banking crisis is bound to happen. This last crisis was bad enough, but what is even more shocking is that nobody did anything to prevent a recurrence:

-the WS boys think they survived, they think they are the chosen ones. The ones who know greed is good.

-the Obama administration did nothing. So much was expected given who paid for the campaign and the festivities. Obama talks tough, but there was no action.

-everyone is ready for a recovery, and by recovery they mean, a return to the good times. The times of unsustainable exuberance. Sometimes you get what you ask for.

-several bad things are bound to happen in this decade. We will run out of key resources. Pollution will skyrocket, and climate change effects will become very apparent. It is unlikely to affect the rich countries much within the next 10 years, but its effects will be seen and felt in the third world for sure.

-we are due for a major pandemic. This one is only a matter of when. We may have dodged H1N1, but something else will surely pop up.

-terrorism will continue unabated. Now that we declared a war on terror, we officially acknowledged there is no end to it.

-there will be great victories, much applause and much flag waving. Face it, everyone is ready for a shot in the arm. But the real problems will not be solved. They will just appear elsewhere and under a different name.

-a showdown with China is imminent.

Happy New Year

I wish everyone a happy New Year. It probably won't be "happy" in the usual consumerist sense, but if we can transcend the quest for items, and learn to worry about things that really matter, happiness is just around the corner.

As for the housing crisis, it isn't over yet. In some areas the worst is yet to come. Many more fancy-ARM-mortgages have yet to reset and when that happens foreclosures will go up another notch. California is likely to be hit very hard since over 65% of these fancy credit schemes were written in this state. Housing prices will fall another 10-15% in the best areas.

More job losses too are to be expected, especially in the retail sector, where the numbers were especially poor this holiday season. The whole service sector, by now the most important part of our fluffy hot-air economy, will see huge declines. But manufacturing will not be safe either.

China and India are in for some really nasty surprises. They may find themselves sliding backwards faster than their recent meteoric rises. As for the rest of the world, expect some serious instability in the Middle East. The fallout of Bush's democracy experiment (which was nothing more than a scheme to make his friends very rich) is yet to come.

In short, all is set for another "interesting" year.

happy new year

Happy New Year from San Diego. We hope things will get better in 2008 and that people will come to their senses and understand what it is they are doing to their existence. Not to the planet, because I am sure the planet has many millions of years left, with or without us. But to ourselves and our ability to survive here. Looking around the odds are not good. Too much is invested in the status quo. We are talking billions of dollars in infrastructure that is dependent on cars, airplanes and other wasteful mechanical means. Dependent on water being pumped in from hundreds of miles away. Water that is ever scarcer because we are depleting the storage tanks known as aquifers.

Food that needs to be trucked in. Food that requires 10 calories of carbon energy for every calorie of sunlight energy. Food that requires water that isn't there. And food that is packaged with layers and layers of plastics, cardboard boxes, jars, cans, etc. To say nothing of the miles we drive just to get it from the supermarket. And the carbon dioxide emitted from running our freezers and fridges.

We will think about that tomorrow again. Today, we celebrate. Happy 2008