The Future's Bright, The Future's Orange

NVDL: Apparently from Alan Knott-Craig (CEO of Vodacom) to his staff...

2008 has certainly started with a bang! The future was rosy on 31 December 2007, but suddenly everyone is buying candles and researching property in Perth!

A combination of recession in the USA, global equity market negativity, high interest rates, the National Credit Act and power outages have combined to create the perfect storm.

But don't panic!

This is not the first time there's been doom and gloom. Every few years the same thing happens. We experience massive economic growth, everyone is optimistic and buying Nescafe Gold, and holiday homes, and Merc's. The positivity gets ahead of itself and the economy overheats, and then panic sets in because the economy seems to be collapsing when in actual fact it's simply making an adjustment back to a reasonable level.

It happened in 1989, when SA defaulted on its international loans and the stock market and Rand crashed, it happened in 1994 when the ANC took power and everyone thought war would break out, it happened in 1998 when interest rates hit 25% and you couldn't give away your house, and it happened in 2001 when a fairly unstable guy by the name of Osama arranged for 2 Boeings to fly into the tallest buildings in New York!

On each of those occasions everyone thought it was the end of the world and that there was no light in sight. And on each occasion, believe it or not, the world did not actually end, it recovered and in fact things continued to get better.

I think 2008 will be a tough year, but I also see it as a great opportunity to seize the day whilst everyone else is whinging and get a front-seat on the inevitable boom that we'll experience in 2009, 2010 and beyond.

Make sure you make a mental note of everything that is happening now, because it will happen again and again, and if you don't recognize the symptoms you'll be suckered into the same negativity, and forget to look for the opportunities.

It's easy to be negative. Subconsciously, you WANT to be negative! Whenever you open the papers they tell you about the goriest hi-jacking and the most corrupt politicians. Why don't they dedicate more pages to the fact that Joburg is the world's biggest man-made forest, or to the corruption-free achievements of the vast majority of public officials? Because bad news sells. Good news is boring.

SA still has the best weather in world! We're lucky enough to possess a huge chunk of the world's resources, i.e.: gold, platinum, coal, iron. The growth in India and China will continue to accelerate (India and China sign 10mil new mobile customers every month), and so will their demand for our resources. The government has already embarked on massive infrastructure projects (some of them a tad late, i.e.: electricity), and this will pump money into the economy.

We are all lucky enough to be a part of the birth of a massive and all-encompassing industry. The Internet has and will continue to change the world. The enormity of its impact is up there with the wheel, electricity, TV, telephones, and possibly man's greatest ever invention, coffee. Not only does it open up an entirely untapped world of commerce, but it is also the ultimate disseminator of information and news. Apartheid would not have lasted 40 years if the Internet had existed! And you're part of it!

I'm looking forward to another year of ASA complaints, IR issues, Plug & Wireless parties, BTS roll-outs, billing runs, irate customers, happy customers, orange bubbles, faulty elevators, etc, etc. The nice stuff makes me feel good, and the challenges remind me why we can beat the competition. Most importantly I'm looking forward to having fun and making memories.

So ignore the doomsayers, install a timer on your geyser, and buy Ricoffee for a couple of months.

NVDL: Yes, it's all very positive and constructive, and at any other time I'd agree and go along with these sentiments. Except we're dealing with an overarching paradigm that is simply this: we have reached the limit to (what we thought was limitless)growth. It's absolute for as long as we are unable to solve cold fusion as a way to get lots of energy out of virtually nothing, and know how to manage/use/control it. Massive populations of human beings tied to resource limits is our current reality. We were able to reach 7 billion thanks to the magical benefits of cheap oil. With oil no longer cheaps, fewer and fewer human beings can enjoy those benefits. That's a long term, I daresay, permanent shift.

Kunstler: Fullbown Panic

"It's nature's way that waves crest just before they break." - James Howard Kunstler

Knees knocked last week from sea to shining sea as the shape-shifting monster of economic reality cut a swathe of destruction through the markets and financial ranks. The exact nature of this giant beast still remained largely concealed in a fog of accounting gambits, policy blusters, and reporting dodges, but a few intrepid scouts who glimpsed the behemoth up close said it looked like Godzilla with Herbert Hoover's face.

George W. Bush, tried to appease the beast by offering each American adult the dollar equivalent of half a month's mortgage payment -- with the exhortation to drive forthwith to the nearest WalMart and blow it on salad shooters and plasma TV's -- but Hooverzilla just laughed at the offering and pounded the equity markets further into the dust of loss, while the "bank-like" guardians of wealth lay in the drainage ditches bleeding from their ears and eyes.

My favorite moment was seeing Treasury Secretary Paulson and one of his fellow shaved-head deputies at a press conference rostrum frantically trying to calm the news media rabble like a couple of extraplanetary high priests from a Star Trek episode -- the batteries having run down in their laser wands, and their incantations ("liquidity! liquidity!) veering into mystifying glossolalia.

I resort to such admitted extreme hyperbole because it may be the only language that an infotainment-drunk society can still process in the face of an epochal calamity that will transform the lush terms of everyday life as we've known it into something like a bleak surrealist landscape in the manner of Tanguy. That crashing sound out there is the armature of confidence needed to support an economy based on faith that borrowed money will be paid back. It's as simple as that. (Doesn't seem so exciting now, does it?)

The United States is so broke, its people at every level from the Federal Reserve on down don't know whether to shit or go blind. The homeowners cringing in the media rooms of their 5000-square-foot personal family resorts don't know how long they can stay put microwaving pepperoni hot pockets with the default clock ticking. The mortgage "servicers" don't know how they will persuade interested parties like, say, the Illinois State Cafeteria Workers' Pension Fund (holder of X-amount of mortgage-backed securities underwritten by, say, Merrill Lynch or Deutsche Bank) to foreclose on properties scattered everywhere from Key West to Bainbridge Island -- or if there is actually any legal mechanism known to man that would make it possible to "work out" the sliced-and-diced collateral.

The millions of maxed-out credit card holders and the issuers of their plastic are stuck together paddling a leaky tub in a sea of troubles every bit as wide, deep, and polluted as the one the mortgage junkies and their enablers are sinking in. The developers of malls, office parks, and power centers are weeping into their filing cabinets as the harsh daylight of insolvency stops the orgy of "consumption" and the retail tenants pack up their unsellable goodies for the liquidators, and the rent checks stop arriving in the mail, and the notes on this mall and that mall enter the eerie realm of "non-performance."

And, of course, there are the genius wonder boyz and Wall Street playerz whose algorithms and turpitudes underwrote the script of this horror show -- for all I know they'll end up laughing into sugary skull drinks on a beach in the Cayman Islands, or doing Chinese fire drills in federal prison (or simply ass-fucked on the granite countertops of their Tribecca aeries by mobs of angry, repossessed, swindled former American dreamers pouring into Manhattan from the tract house dormitories of New Jersey and Long Island).

There's a lot to be concerned about out there. I don't mean to be too cute about it. But, as the master once said, nothing is funnier than unhappiness.

A whole closet full of "other shoes" is now waiting to be dropped. Surely the biggest clodhoppers in the closet belong to the hedge funds, representing trillions and trillions of dollar-denominated "positions" which, however hallucinatory, had previously yielded enough real "money" year-by-year to keep all the realtors and Humvee dealers in the Hamptons goose-stepping to Goldman Sachs's drumbeat. These "positions" can't help now from moving into counterparty crisis territory, especially as the bond insurers such as MBIA and Ambac go up in a vapor, and if that happens the damage could be so colossal globally that Stephen Hawking might have to be brought in to run the Federal Reserve.

This is going to be a rough week. Fastening your seat belts may not be enough for this ride. Better superglue yourselves to the floorboards and pray for God's mercy.

Oil Hits $100 a Barrel for the First Time

HOUSTON — Oil prices briefly reached $100 a barrel on Wednesday, a long-awaited milestone in an era of rapidly escalating energy demand and tightening supplies.

Crude oil futures for February delivery hit $100 on the New York Mercantile Exchange shortly after noon when a single trader bid up the price by buying a modest lot and then sold it immediately at a small loss. Prices eased somewhat in later trading, settling at $99.62.
But while the trader was apparently looking for vanity bragging rights, the spike in crude prices of $3.64 for the day reflected deeper worldwide trends, including the surge in energy demand from China, India and the oil-producing countries themselves.

“We’re starting the year with a bang,” said Fadel Gheit, senior energy analyst for Oppenheimer & Company. “It’s the same usual suspects: the bad, bad world out there, a cold winter and declining oil inventories.”
The immediate impetus for the price rise appeared to come from an attack by rebels in the Nigerian oil center of Port Harcourt and rough weather in the Gulf of Mexico that slowed Mexican oil exports.

The price of oil has been flirting with the $100 mark for months, and in recent weeks there has been added price pressure because of turbulence in Pakistan following the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, which may threaten further unrest in the Middle East.
There is no shortage of explanations for the escalation of oil prices by about 60 percent over the last year. The price of a barrel was below $25 as recently as 2003 and, almost unimaginably, below $11 in 1998, a time when there was a glut in the world oil markets.

Booming economies in recent years have led to more consumption of oil-derived products like gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. Political tensions in countries like Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran have threatened world supplies, while important fields in Mexico, the United States and other countries are aging and producing less.

Big oil companies, though flush with cash from record profits, are having trouble finding promising new fields to increase supplies. Newly found fields in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Brazil will take years to develop.
The Bush administration has further tightened supplies by announcing that it would add to the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the coming weeks, a move that some leading Democrats have urged President Bush to call off to ease the tight oil market.
Investors and hedge funds have contributed to the run-up in prices. Oil, like other commodities, has become a perceived safe haven for traders who are skittish about the weakening dollar and fallout from the American credit crisis.

“There is a momentum for higher prices because of the lack of cushions and because surprises are everyday events,” said Larry Goldstein, a director of the Energy Policy Research Foundation. “When anything goes wrong now, it gets immediately priced in not by pennies, nickels or dimes but by dollars.”

Oil is now within reach of its inflation-adjusted high, reached in April 1980 in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution when oil prices jumped to the equivalent of $102.81 in today’s money. The brief stab at $100 on Wednesday broke the previous intraday trading record of $99.29, reached on Nov. 21. The price at the end of the day, $99.62, surpassed the record close of $98.18, set on Nov. 23.

Other commodities also rose, spurring more speculation that inflation could be a problem this year. Spot gold climbed over $860 an ounce, and soybeans, wheat, platinum, heating oil and natural gas soared.
Unlike the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s, the current spike in oil prices has not caused a recession or contracted consumer spending in a major way so far. But it has widened the trade deficit and raised concerns about inflation at a time when a growing number of economists fear a recession may be coming.

Energy experts are divided about how high oil prices can go, with some predicting that an economic slowdown will ultimately ease demand pressures.
“We’re going to see sharply higher gasoline prices this spring, we’re going to see sharply higher heating oil and diesel prices immediately,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service. But he added, “If I had to bet what we would see first, $115 oil or $85 oil, I’d bet $85.”

Gasoline prices have so far lagged behind the rise in the price of oil, currently at a nationwide average of $3.05 a gallon for regular grade, according to AAA, the automobile club. That is below the all-time peak in May of $3.23 a gallon, but 73 cents higher than at this time a year ago.
Mr. Gheit said if there is a recession “oil prices will definitely go down because demand will go down and the speculators will take a dip as a leading indicator and they will jump first and that will cause a meltdown.”

Of the trader who sent oil to $100 in New York on Wednesday, Mr. Gheit added, “He’s probably going to frame the ticket and sell it on eBay for $100,000.”
From The New York Times

HURRAY: Oil falls more than $3 on increased Saudi output - But then...

Fire shuts key Canada-U.S. pipeline, oil leaps $3

We're going to see this trend a lot over the near term. There's going to be this incredible demand for good news (on the energy theme), and each and every time there will be bad news to counter it. This is inevitable in the Peak Oil era, where supply is on an unassailable downward curve. It is a feature of delusion that you wish for something other than the inevitable, but it is still very human. It's the same thing believing there is life after death. Sure, we wish it were true, but wishing and wanting doesn't make dreams come true.

Oil Prices Rebound in Asian Trading

At the very least, we'll soon see a world with more bicycles, or at least, I hope we will.

Kunstler: Economy Deathwatch

The great debate among those of us on the Economy Deathwatch seems to be whether the debacle we observe around us will resolve as a crash or a slow-motion financial train wreck. It seems to me that at every layer of the system, we're susceptible to both.... Some things are crashing as I write.

The dollar is losing about a cent every three weeks against other currencies. A penny doesn't seem like much, but keep that pace up for another year and the world's "reserve currency" becomes the world's reserve toilet paper....

Of course the government's consumer price inflation figures and employment numbers are dismissed broadly as lacking credence. But anybody who has bought a bag of onions and a jar of jam lately knows that things are way up in the supermarket aisles, and so many illegal Mexican migrants were employed in the Sunbelt housing boom, that their absence in the bust won't register on any chart.

...the very real realm of poor choices, fiscal and fiduciary irresponsibility, deliberately deceptive policy, criminal malfeasance, and the broad abandonment of standards in acceptable behavior by people in authority. A lot of observers attribute this to the Gordon Gecko ethos -- the discovery back in the 1980s that "greed is good," which was meant to trump a previous ethos that life is tragic.

... it is hard to imagine we will get through the month of December without some major trauma in the markets. In fact, I'd go so far as to predict a thousand-point drop (or more) in the Dow just in this week after Thanksgiving. Real wealth "out there" is evaporating like popsicles...

... My own hunch is that average Americans are so maxed out on debt that they don't know whether to shit or go blind. Perhaps lots of them are willing to take a last step into fatal insolvency in order to put a plasma TV screen under the Christmas tree and appear as heroes to their families. If that's the case, it would only imply a greater bloodbath in credit card default thundering through the system in February and March, which would only deepen the carnage in collateralized debt instruments further up the food chain.

...The rise in price is only the mildest symptom of growing instability for the system that allocates the world's most critical resource. Even in the face of "demand destruction," weird changes are occurring in the way that the oil producers do business. The decline in export rates and the new spirit of "oil nationalism" will take center stage now, even if the US economy seizes up. These phenomena will represent a new cycle in world affairs: the global contest for remaining fossil fuel resources.

Sooner rather than later, the next symptom will appear: spot shortages around the US and hoarding behavior. This is what will finally wake the American public out of its long sleepwalk (and Matthew Simmons said this first, by the way) -- when the lines form at the gas stations and the tempers flare and the handguns come out of the glove compartments.

NVDL: In a high level meeting between the Chinese oke who bought a massive stake in Standard Bank, question were put to a power broker from Goldman Sachs about the long term future of world energy. He was somewhat dismissive (others would say sensible) in saying: if the US and China can reach the levels of efficiency that Japan now has, no one is going to have a problem.
Simple. All the bankers Ja'd and went 'Amen'.

Problem is, Japan is one of the smallest countries in the world (in terms of landmass), China and the US are amongst the largest. Even if they start building train stations in backyards across the country, the pinch has already started. I'm going to give some very counterintuitive advice: Start Partying! Party like there is no tomorrow, 'cos guess, what, tomorrow ever after just got cancelled.

Gauteng’s economic activity on down trend

GAUTENG’S Business Barometre has entered its seventh consecutive month of performing negatively, a trend expected to continue into the new year, economists said today.
Since April economic activity in the province had declined 9,9%, according to Standard Bank’s chief economist Goolam Ballim.
For the rest of this article, go here.

NVDL: The limits to infinite growth are starting to manifest. Unfortunately this trend will be echoed elsewhere, beyond just South Africa's borders - first the USA, Europe and later to Asia.
Brent crude right now: $93.41
Gold: $787.35

Oil Officials See Limit Looming on Production

Kunstler: The Car As Indispensable Umbilicus

...a major feature of this is the asphalt pad-and-driveway where the household stores (and not incidentally displays) its collection of cars, one for each adult family member plus "training" models for the adolescent offspring. This part of the package is indispensable, the umbilicus that connects the household to all the necessities of life, from paychecks to Slim Fast bars. Its continuation is assumed. In fact, the value of the house depends on that assumption.

The appeal of this program is obvious in the consumer-democracy of recent times. The stupendous aggregate wealth ginned up at the climax of the cheap energy fiesta made everyone an aristocrat. As Tom Wolfe has pointed out, the average American roofer or insurance adjuster of these times has enjoyed a more comfortable life than Louis XIV. They certainly bathe more regularly, in sumptuous vinyl tubs, with motor-drive water jets, and possess refrigerated larders of delicacies from thousands of miles away (not to mention access to colonoscopies and periodontics).

Uh-Oh

This luxurious life is a fragile thing, though. The fragility is actually expressed in the houses themselves, which are uniformly constructed from materials that would not seem to have a glorious destiny: wood-chips, glue, and vinyl. Anyone who visits the Palatine Hill in Rome must be impressed by the way stone blocks and masonry walls melt away over time. Imagine what would happen to box made of chip-board over fir studs after a few decades of poor maintenance. You can even state categorically that the vinyl cladding was not designed to be maintained, only replaced. And in as much as vinyl siding is made from petroleum byproducts, one can easily foresee future replacement problems.

Destruction

There are also the things that you can't see: the furnaces and the mortgages. The expectation that it will be possible to get affordable heating oil or propane gas a decade or so into the future must be considered, shall we say, a crap shoot at best -- and in the climate of upstate New York, that can't be reassuring. As for the mortgages, we already know what is happening to them -- like the "transformer" entities of the movies, they are morphing into monsters that destroy everything in their path.

I guess what really gets me about these houses popping up in the former cornfields and meadows is that the owners have absolutely no idea what a problem they are creating for themselves and their families (and their society), especially now as we move into a critical period of post-peak-oil instability. It's both poignant and pathetic, and a little disgusting. Their expectations are plain to see: that the life of luxury and incessant mobility is so assured that they can invest everything, even their anticipated future earnings, to enjoy all that the program had to offer. But they have tragically missed the fact that the program has changed.

Of course, I am aware that my ability to venture easily into the outlands of Washington County, New York, is not something that I can take for granted much longer. A year or so from now, I may have to plan ahead, even make sacrifices, to travel so distantly from where I live. In the meantime, I wonder with the keenest curiosity what is going through the minds of the people who dwell out there. Surely they've noticed that gasoline is $3.25. One can easily imagine the granite countertop in the kitchen where the bills are piling up, the frightening invoices from Master Card and Discovery, along with dunning letters from the company that "services" the mortgage. One can imagine the feelings of despondency creeping up the veins of the household lord and his lady as they contemplate the distress sale of their motorboat, jet skis, snowmobiles, and RV -- and the futility even of trying.

Normal No More

I think we are entering a time when what has seemed utterly normal to us will suddenly appear alien and threatening. If there was ever a recipe for an extreme social response, this will be it. As the poet said, the center cannot hold.

From James Kunstler's website.

NVDL: Scariiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiy.

Average petrol cost at £1 a litre (BBC)

Petrol prices have risen on the back of higher global crude costs

The average UK price of unleaded petrol has passed £1 per litre for the first time, a research group has said.
A litre of unleaded petrol now costs 100.08p, according to the latest data from industry researchers Catalist.

Petrol prices have risen sharply on the back of record global oil prices, which have increased as a result of supply concerns and the weak dollar.

For more, go here.

ALERT: Manuel forecasts lower growth

From Sowetan Online:
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel today forecast lower growth on the back of global uncertainty, announcing he will hoard some surplus revenues to absorb future shocks.

Presenting his medium-term budget to parliament, Manuel said instability on the major markets, dollar depreciation, volatile commodity prices and rising oil and food inflation are hurting South Africa’s growth projections.

“One of the first issues that arises is .. a very moderate revision downwards by 0.1% of growth this year, a more significant downward revision by 0.7% for next year and then it starts picking up again but is still down on our February forecast for the third year,” said Manuel.

In his main budget in February, Manuel had predicted economic growth of just over 5% per year up to 2009, which he now put at 4.9%, 4.5% and 4.8% for each of the three years.
For the rest of this Sowetan Online article, go here.

NVDL: Lower growth = fewer jobs = more poor/disgruntled/disenfranchised/disempowered people = more crime.

10 businesses facing extinction in 10 years

Determining which industries aren't long for this world may seem easy enough. But some types of businesses, such as telemarketing, are surprisingly hard to kill.
And then again, other industries, probably the ones you're sad to see go, can't find a way to survive.
So start setting up your office pool, because here are our picks for 10 businesses facing extinction in 10 years.

From Entrepreneur.com
By Geoff Williams

Record stores

Record stores are closing in, well, record numbers. One of the most prominent music retailers, Tower Records, shut down all 89 stores last year after concluding it couldn't withstand the onslaught of online music stores and chains like Wal-Mart, which can offer lower prices and sell other items to offset the smaller number of CDs being sold.

Odds of survival in 10 years: Great, if you consider Wal-Mart a record store.

Camera film manufacturing

This probably isn't the best business to get into right now. According to The Chicago Tribune, from May 2006 to May 2007, the volume of prints made from digital cameras grew by 34 percent. Film camera sales, meanwhile, fell by 49 percent, while digital cameras sales continued to grow — by 5 percent. Of American internet users, 70 percent own a digital camera; another survey shows that 70 percent of Canadians now use a digital camera. Odds of survival in 10 years: Some entrepreneurs who specialize in making camera film for amateur photographers could possibly make a living.

Crop dusters

They'll be around in 10 years, but likely not in their present form. The average age of the typical crop duster is 60, the number of crop dusters is dwindling, and the profession can be dangerous. Just several weeks ago, an Arkansas crop dusting company was ordered to stop flying in Iowa after spraying farm workers with a fungicide; 36 farm hands in a cornfield had to be decontaminated by a hazardous materials crew.

Odds of survival in 10 years: The type of crop dusting plane that chased after Cary Grant in "North by Northwest" will have almost certainly gone south. Farmers say that they'll always need crop dusters, even though new technologies have made them less important than in the past. But commercial airlines are increasingly taking business away from the small, independent crop dusters.

Gay bars

As The Orlando Sentinel noted in a recent article, around the country gay bars have been going out of business as gay men and women have been gaining greater acceptance in society. What used to be a hangout for people who felt unwelcome elsewhere is becoming less necessary.

Odds of survival in 10 years: As with many industries, the very best of them will endure; the rest won't.

Newspapers

Some people thought they were through when radio and TV news came about. Even after the fax machine revolutionized offices, some people predicted that everyone would have their news faxed in, since that would be quicker than relying on a newspaper. But the numbers have been falling precipitously since the 1990s when the internet came on the scene. In the past year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations twice has posted drops averaging 2.1 and 2.8 percent over six-month periods. Newsrooms across the country have been hemorrhaging staff.

Odds of survival in 10 years: They won't disappear; they'll be on the internet. We don't recommend startups investing a lot of money into a printing press plant.

Pay phones

In 1997, there were more than 2 million pay phones in the U.S.; now there are approximately half as many. There are probably always going to be certain places like airports and hotels that offer pay phones, as long as there are people who don't own or can't afford cell phones. Because phone kiosks on the streets are a favorite for drug dealers, who don't want to have their own numbers tapped and tracked, cities are shedding them.

Odds of survival in 10 years: They'll be around, but won't be anything to call home about.

Used bookstores

They've been closing fast, and those that are still open are relying on what's making them obsolete: the internet. A used bookstore used to be the place to find that beloved, out-of-print children's book you used to read 17 times a day until your little sister flushed it down the toilet. Now you just type that title in a search engine and order it within minutes. Odds of survival in 10 years: Some of them will still be eking out an existence, but the handwriting is on the wall.
Piggy banksYou may chuckle, but as we continue gravitating toward a paperless society, it's not difficult to imagine a day when piggy banks no longer exist.

Odds of survival in 10 years: Sure, they'll probably still be a few around — in antique shops.

Telemarketing

The good news for people who hate telemarketing calls is that the industry may finally be dying; the bad news is that it may take a while. Telemarketing has been hit hard by the national Do-Not Call list that was established five years ago, and sales have been stagnant, but the industry still managed to bring in $393 billion in revenue last year. Some of this is due to clever marketing. This includes holding raffles at shopping malls; when you sign your information, you agree to accept calls from the company running the contest and its partners. Cell phones are exempt from automated telemarketing calls, but not from individuals calling. Then there are occasional windows of opportunity: The national Do-Not Call list is set to expire in 2008, unless you remember to register again.

Odds of survival in 10 years: They'll be here. Humbled, more impotent, but probably still here.

Coin-operated arcades

With Nintendo Wii, casual gaming online and the Xbox 360, the video game arcade industry is thriving, but not the standalone brick-and-mortar arcades. For those of you who thought arcades were already dead, they still exist — at movie theaters, miniature golf courses and other touristy spots — but it seems only a matter of time before they vanish from the landscape. Ten years ago, there were 10,000 arcades in the nation, and now the number is close to 3,000, according to the American Amusement Machine Association. Revenue from arcade game units brought in $866 million last year, which sounds good until you consider that in 1994, the industry was pocketing $2.3 billion and that the profits are only still high because it costs so much to play a game.

Odds of survival in 10 years: Game over.

NVDL: The grass can't stay green forever. Interesting on this list are newspapers, record stores and gay bars. Not sure if I agree with the crop duster idea. If you buy into the philosophy that the world is about to unflatten, unshrink, become far larger, we'll see the end of a lot of industries: the hypermarket, parking lots, malls, drive thru, fast food, airline alliances like Star, the convenience store at a gas station etc.

We'll see a return of cottage industries like the butcher, the baker and the candlestickmaker. We'll also see the demassification of schools, from the current prison lookalikes, to private and home tutoring and also smaller, friendlier, more community integrated buildings.