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...
Category: Uncategorized
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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,...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
Trend Forecast
The Golden Opportunities trend will continue to rapidly grow, particularly as merger/acquisition and consolidation rates increase as a result of cheap money. In addition, as the global economy slows, financially strapped enterprises will be gobbled up by stronger competition. Again, in an increasingly stressful business climate, survival strategies will trump innovation by focusing on the present...
Post
Ready To Explode
Look at any meaningful metric to determine America’s and much of the Western World’s economic, physical, cultural and moral health. In fact, all those indicators are in sharp decline. Tensions are high and the trajectory is not positive. As we wrote two years ago in “Empire America is fading fast” (Trends Journal, Fall 2013), “When...
Post
Trend Forecast
As 2016 dawns, the factors are clear: The rise of the Black Lives Matter protest movement, spontaneous campus protests over race issues, the sharp increase in far-right movements in Europe in the wake of the refugee crisis, the growing likelihood that more and more voters worldwide vote against a candidate rather for other candidates, and...