The “Not Welcome Here” debate will not only be an ongoing and contentious theme in the 2016 American Presidential Reality Show, but “how to stop the human waves from landing on foreign shores” will dominate politics and elections throughout Europe. In fact, so intense will the “protect the homeland, protect our people, preserve our nationality” movements grow, that long dominant ruling-class...
Global Recession
Happy Economic New Year! Wild equity market, currency and commodity price swings have become the new abnormal. Since money makes the world go around, follow the money. During the first six weeks of 2016, the global banking system got pounded. Bank shares in Europe fell 24 percent. Japan’s Topix Banks Index lost 21 percent. In the US, the KBW NASDAQ Bank...
Trend Forecast
The greatest financial scam in world history has inflated the largest debt/equity bubble in world history. While it is currently deflating, the precise time it will burst and how low the markets will go are difficult to forecast, considering the scope and depth of central-bank intervention and government/political maneuvering. At some point, however, a future round of manipulation will fail, the...
The Presidential Reality Show™
Bye, bye, Miss American Pie. It’s a Barnum and Bailey World. It’s the Greatest Show on Earth: The 2016 race for the White House. It’s a red, white and blue living-color freak show. It’s produced and directed exclusively by the masters of propaganda: just six corporations that own and operate 90 percent of the “media” — and exclusively host the presidential debates....
Trend Forecast
In our Spring 2015 Trends Journal, we wrote “If the election were held today, and Hillary Clinton survives the cash-for-influence scandal, we forecast Clinton as the winner.” Since then, Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders has cast Wall Street as America’s Public Enemy No. 1 and Clinton as a major benefactor. In addition, if growing allegations that Clinton used her office as...
Boomers turn 70
The first wave of baby boomers, about 2.4 million of them born in 1946, will turn 70 in 2016. The generation that turned popular culture and societal norms upside down will confront the rigors of growing old, face life-and-death decisions, and grapple with difficult lifestyle choices. This initial wave of boomers led the charge in a period of dramatic change, fighting...
Trend Forecast
The potential in serving the more aspiring needs of boomers, and especially boomers turning 70, is ripe with “Golden Opportunities,” intersecting with another Top Trend of 2016 (see page 26). While major retailers, Big Pharma and the Medical Industrial Complex will dominate market share and profitability, wide gaps are opening for entrepreneurs with good ideas, an open heart, community sensibilities...
Self-Sustainability
Take a trip around the world. If you live outside one of those cities of wealth, take a walk around the block. What do you see? On the global scene, from Canada to Chile, Venezuela to Russia, Nigeria to Norway, and South Africa to China, countries large and small and rich and poor — all bountiful with exportable raw materials...
Trend Forecast
During this transition phase, in which self-sustainability has yet to hit the government radar or mainstream, individuals and their families — whether earning less in jobs that don’t pay living wages or wanting to break their corporate shackles — will take life into their own hands and become more self-sustainable. From aging boomers to middle-agers and millennials, getting off the...
Golden Opportunities
The cheap-money, zero-interest-rate policies of the Federal Reserve, mimicked with increasing skill across global economies, have further fueled the takeover, mergers and acquisitions landscape engulfing civilized nations. As the Trends Research Institute predicted in its Top Trends of 2015, “Takeover” has indeed taken over. The absence of meaningful regulation governing monopolistic activity, coupled with ease in borrowing to accelerate mass...