What’s in Store for 2012

I originally wanted to write something about New Years Resolutions or the futility thereof, but I have been overwhelmed by the holiday overindulgence and stupor.

With a week gone from New Year, it looks passé anymore to even talk about Resolutions.

Hence, I decided instead to write something about what, I believe, are in store for 2012.

Not that I have suddenly acquired psychic powers  or have the ability to divine what’s going to happen. These things belong more to the realm of reason and knowledge rather than to the realm of the occult or of the esoteric.

This is, however, not to rule out the possibility that some non-temporal factors may be at work and that there may be a grand cosmic design of which we know little about.

I will limit myself to just a few important educated guesses for the year, but I am not going to box myself into a corner by confining myself to the business or investment side.

After all, the real world is a complex tapestry (pardon the cliché) where business, economics, politics, religion and even art weave themselves into interdependent and seamless dynamics where you don’t know where one ends and the others begin.

It would look a little exciting how these sort of mini-predictions would  pan out as 2012 rolls on. Except for the first item in the list (which borders on the ludicrous), it certainly bears watching how these guesses will  turn out to be.

Let us look at things from the global and as well as the local scene.

Here are the things I see in my crystal ball:

1.The world’s not going to end, and the 12-21-12  Mayan Doomsday scenario will go pfft.

Just like last year’s May 21, 2011 “end-of-the-world” prediction of Harold Camping – and many others before that – the December 21, 2012 doomsday prediction supposedly by the Mayans, will go down as a non-event and everybody will wake up on December 22, 2012 still whole, intact and very much alive.

If ever, the only ones who will wake up “not whole or not intact” and less alive are those who will sell their patrimonies to embrace Doomsday with the anticipation of a lifting-up the sky to the Heavens via something called “rapture”.

What, I think, would go up the sky on such date shall be the witches, vampires and others known to metamorphose into oversized bats on moonlit nights to ply their usual trade. 

2. Obama will not get reelected.

I think President Obama will not get reelected and a new Republican US President will emerge in the November US elections.

Based on my daily readings, there is just too much dissent and smouldering anger by US citizens against the Obama administration for continuing the very same failed economic policies as the previous one, and every US citizen knows what these policies are.

The cure for debt can never be much more debt, and the sin of overspending can never be cured by even more overspending.

Again, the George Clason’s (Richest Man in Babylon) proscription on overspending, bears repeating here for the nth time:

“He who spends more than he earns is sowing the seeds of needless self-indulgence by which he is sure to reap the whirlwinds of trouble and humiliation.”

This dictum is unbreakable and its truth is proven by history beyond any shade of doubt.

This leads us to the next prediction.

3. The US debt problem would start to unravel.

This US debt problem thing has been in the lips of almost every economist or investment guru.

On December 21, 2011 – exactly one year before the Mayan doomsday prediction – the US Debt-to-GDP Ratio passed the 100% mark with total debt at US$15.18 trillion.

Well, you are free to make or dismiss the connection between the Mayan doomsday forecast and the 100% Debt-to-GDP mark. Admit it or not, the coincidence is just too uncanny and sounds too chillingly foreboding.

Right now, the estimate is that about half of every spending by the US government comes from borrowed money and if the tap of credit closes, all hell will break loose.

On August 2, 2011, the situation was dangerously close with the debt-ceiling issue resolved and agreement inked out just at the nick of time, thus averting a situation where the US government runs out of funds even for salaries of civil servants.

The general thinking is that the unraveling may take anywhere from 2 years to 5 years. Only a small minority says it will come as early as this year, while still others say that the unraveling has long started.

Right now the crucial piece that holds the line is China which has trillions in US treasuries. As Martin Weiss, PhD of Weiss Research warned in his most recent piece, “America’s Financial Doomsday”, there is evidence that China will soon stop holding the line.

If and when this happens, the consequencies are just too ugly and too nightmarish to even talk about.

So much for big picture, this post will not look complete without touching a local issue that is talked about everywhere in the country.

Let us therefore go to the local front.

4. Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona will resign anytime before the impeachment finishes.

The reason for resignation will be quite obvious – family pressure and eventual inability to take too much heat.

Everybody makes mistakes, big or small, somehow, at some point in his life and in the culture of impunity which prevailed during Arroyo administration, mistakes were even more inevitable.

When mistakes are brought out in the glare of media lights, members of immediate family are the first to cave in and succumb to pressure. CJ Corona may withstand the heat, but his immediate family members will not.

Once his immediate family members caves in under pressure, he too will crumble. That I think is what is going to happen.

For such reason, he is going to resign and will go back to the private sector or even to the academe.

I do not have anything against CJ Corona, in fact he is a friend from my banking days as credit analyst at a local bank where he also worked as Assistant Vice-President for another department.

As my lawyer boss was Corona’s close friend, I also became quite close to him and was even   a favorite stand-in companion during lunch time. At that same time, Corona was teaching at a law school where I was also his student. That was the time before the lure of the Kingdom aborted my plan of becoming a lawyer.

It will be sad for somebody I consider a good friend but I think that’s the way it will go.

If there is a lesson on this it will be something to this effect:

“Structures influence behavior and innocent men can easily make mistakes brought about by an undesirable structure.”

There is something about human nature that can be learned from this.