Am I Psychic?

My sister comes up to me in the Kalahari in January, okay - are you with me - and she starts pitching to me about how we must buy property together. I start a statement that boils down to 'No,' and she immediately backs up her pitch saying that she's discussed it with my father (a successful property developer and investor) and he supports her idea - we should buy a place together. She is going overseas so I can live there, and we can pay it off together and get rich off the investment. Makes sense ne? So here we are, in a lonely Kalahari campsite, the Gemsbok looking like black and white tropical fish swimming on a distant belly dancing pan, and my sister and my father are bearing down on me. Come on son, just sign on the dotted line.

So I say: "Now is not a good time to go into property. The markets are turning. I know it doesn't look that way, but values are going to go down. I'll buy something when it becomes a buyer's market." I know that it sounds incredibly arrogant, especially since it contradicts what 'the expert' has advised.
My dad shakes his head (and I mean, this oke made all his money in the property business over a period longer than my lifetime) and my sister's face looks like a nuclear war has started in her brain. Both of them basically accuse me of being 'doom and gloom' and appear both frustrated, angry and disgusted.

Cut to 4 months later and we're seeing houses in South Africa devaluing. I don't know when the sub-prime crisis hit in the US, I don't remember if I was aware of it in mid-January when we talked about this in Botswana, but I turned out to be 100% on the money. If any possible buyer had known then what we know now (regarding interest rates and all the rest), they would have been nuts to invest. And here I was, with my dad saying, "Go for it son," and my sister saying, "Well if you don't go in this with me, I'll get someone else." Okay then.

I know what you're thinking. That was a one off fluke, a gelukskoot. Ne? Not so fast. On Thursday this week I interviewed Katharine Euphrat, an American intern. We spoke at length about racism in South Africa, and focused in particular on America's dilemma with...are you ready for this...immigrants. One of the questions I asked, last week, was whether there is any Xenophobia in America. I also speculated that this is a problem that is likely to worsen in countries like the USA, the UK, South Korea and South Africa. Two or three days later, all hell breaks loose. And what word gets thrown around? Xenophobia. Racism. I was specifically studying this two days before it erupted.

In a magazine article I wrote as far back as 2006 I advised the following:
- buy gold
- do not buy new property especially if you already have properties that you are already paying off

Go and check yourself to see how the value of gold has climbed since 2006. I think gold was about 1/3 what it is now.
I've made other predictions too, namely the current oil price level I predicted many weeks ago (before the Goldman Sachs gurus did) and I also predicted $150 by the end of this year, also in advance of the Goldman Sachs moment of enlightenment, and I've predicted, along with many other commentators, that our most immediate crisis would be 'starvation'. I know, before this happened it seemed like a crazy statement to make.

So the answer is, if you live in a fool's world, then yes, I am psychic. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just more closely aligned with reality than by far the majority of people, and these people actively resist to even consider 'bad news', to even think (yes, sometimes that's hard) beyond the ordinary paradigms of society. It's laziness.

There is a very easy explanation for all these things. For why we have a food crisis. Why the world is entering its worst recession, why we will experience chronic stagflation, why property prices in America will spread everywhere, and be chronic in South Africa too. How I know South Africa will not only lose the fight against crime, but eventually be completely overrun (yes, destroyed) by it. How can I make these sweeping statements with any accuracy? Because it is easy to extrapolate our human psychology in terms of our consumption to a macro-version of demand, to see how individual use of energy by a middle class user magnifies on a daily basis to create a worldwide problem of scarcity. Against the background of these simple facts:

- we are dealing with a finite resource against infinite and growing wants
- we are dealing with severe levels of delusional entitlement, mindsets that are not geared to hearing 'bad news' or 'change your habits'
- we have two of the world's biggest populations attempting to come online simultaneously (China and India together have 3 billion people, both countries are growing economically, India is now the world's 12th biggest Economy ahead of South Korea, and rapidly expanding including its human numbers)
- our psychology of previous investment and the 'growth psychology' make it impossible for people or businesses to begin to see how these investments actually have no future (since cheap oil is presupposed to be the underlying resource that these investments run on)
- many obvious past and present patterns are simply ignored in favour of self-reinforcing evidence that calls into question or contradicts unpleasant news (this applies to markets, climate change etc)

So it is easy to see that the downward spiral cannot easily be improved or interrupted. It is an accelerating breakdown, and one that is endorsed by delusional and protracted 'wishful thinking', by our lifestyles and habits, and by the multitude of systems that function solely on these now critical resources. We need oil for fuel, food, to power our homes, to get around, for plastics, medicines. In short, we need it for everything, and in order to afford everything and to continue to live the way we do, we need it to stay cheap. But that's suddenly changed. So is a high oil price important? It's the most important news for you, and for this world. You and everyone else are immediately going to feel those effects, whether you agree that it is important or not.

Here are a few more predictions:

The violence/criminality in South Africa next year will be at least twice as bad as it is now, affecting many other centres, including Cape Town, and we will see a resurgence in numbers that were decreasing, for example murders, rapes, hijackings, bank robberies, cash-in-transit heists, corruption and all the rest (predictions have been made on many occasions about crime increasing prior to this one today). Crime will get worse very quickly, and very soon, and accelerate.

The 2010 World Cup will be shifted to Australia if it happens at all, but it will not happen in South Africa. Crime and electricity will be cited as the chief reasons.
The Eskom crisis will become permanent within a few weeks from today, and within a few months, large areas will no longer have electricity on a permanent basis.
Instability in Zimbabwe will gradually lead to regional instability in Southern Africa. In other words, in the next 5-10 years the subcontinent (as will other regions in the world) will be plunged into a sort of large internecine conflict. Much conflict will not appear any different to either 'racism' or 'criminality', but its roots will be the same: chronic shortages of services, food, shelter and growing levels of intractable poverty.

I know these are dire predictions, and I know they appear very dark and negative, but I can be confident that they will happen simply because I also know that an oil price of $141 this year will simply produce so many economic losers in South Africa, that the majority of people in this country will be poor, unemployed and getting hungrier and unhappier by the day. Any country that has a vast majority of recently disenfranchised poor is going to be angry and restless. And there will be huge resentment towards the middle class (and anyone else really) sitting prettier. Celebrity and wealth in the next decade will become vulgar and will be hidden, an opposite condition to the present 'showing off ' of wealth.

Is there an antidote to all this misery? There is, but I don't expect anyone to buy into it, and I don't expect it will happen. The antidote is farming. Becoming self-sufficient locally. I don't expect you to give up your job and go and toil in some farmers field. Which is also why I know we are on the road that we are on, and will remain on this highway, wherever it takes us.

Food costs rising fastest in 17 years

NEW YORK - Steve Tarpin can bake a graham cracker crust in his sleep, but explaining why the price for his Key lime pies went from $20 to $25 required mastering a thornier topic: global economics.

He recently wrote a letter to his customers and posted it near the cash register listing the factors — dairy prices driven higher by conglomerates buying up milk supplies, heat waves in Europe and California, demand from emerging markets and the weak dollar.

The owner of Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies in Brooklyn said he didn't want customers thinking he was "jacking up prices because I have a unique product."

"I have to justify it," he said.

The U.S. is wrestling with the worst food inflation in 17 years, and analysts expect new data due on Wednesday to show it's getting worse.

By ELLEN SIMON, AP Business Writer
More.

NVDL: Newspapers and news peddlers ought to do well over the next 20-30 years. There is going to be so much bad news, there won't be enough space for all of it.

TIME Poll Shocker

Seems like the financial Boyz and Wall Street Wizards are still in KOO KOO Land. They only admit the bad news when it's a foregone conclusion, which is how the situation got so bad (talking up all the positives ad bankruptsome).

While recession takes hold of the US, my prediction is that it will roll out everywhere else, not because the world is catching cold from the US, but because the world is discovering that it doesn't have a nougat centre filled with limitless supplies of oil.

Our own finance minister said it best: we have to tighten our belts...but not sure if there's much left to tighten. That's code for recession. This will be a recession that gets worse over time.

World: Get Used To Doom and Gloom - My Predictions

When serious information is communicated, people quickly filter it into good/bad news, and the worst news goes immediately to a recycle bin called: Doom and Gloom. And the purveyors of these facts are called Doomsayers and 'Negative'. C'mon people, a bit of critical thinking...think you can do that? It's the least you can do.

I have predicted on this website $100 oil for about 2 years before it happened. I've suggested investing in gold when gold was still $300. (Invest in coal now too). Stock exchanges worldwide are at an extreme level of volatility. This will get worse, with some massive downward corrections. To be clear, by July this year, $90 oil will be a distant memory; two digit oil will have a 'feel-good' factor about it. By July oil will be anywhere between $105 and $120. What people simply don't realise is that none of this is temporary. It's not a temporary blip, temporary problems, temporary shutdowns, temporary crisis. It's something else, and all human beings will be swept into the torrent. It will be chaotic downward shift.

Economists will calmly tell you that high oil prices will dampen demand, and thus prices will not rise any more. Wrong. Oil right now is cheap. Wait until exporters decide to keep the oil for themselves, to run their own countries with their remaining reserves. The voracious race to buy cars and build houses and malls and to run suburbia and the world (with all its festivals and world cups) is not concerned with oil prices, they're concerned with making money. To make money they have an immediate individual focus on meeting deadlines, finishing projects. There is no global view. There is no community consciousness. Bad weather? Who cares. Howz my bottom line? Demand is already powering far, far in advance of the supply curve...even if just the demand for motor vehicles.

Right now oil is cheap. Did I say that already? I'm repeating it here again because some aren't getting the obvious. Oil is cheap. We drive out the stuff to go to gym or a convenience store 3km away. In time, we will be accused of squandering...we'll be indicted by our children for our reckless greed. What were you doing? Our excuse will be that 'everyone was doing it', that it was a lifestyle, that we were distracted, and people were contradicting each other. If that's going to be your excuse, read this website. It's clear. The signal is consistent.

Peak Everything really means that stock exchanges will never again surpass peaks reached roundabout now/recently. There will be small crashes and corrections, and then more carnage, with an overall downward bloodletting. Stagflation is a scenario with slow economic growth (soon to become a permament recession) and relatively high unemployment, coupled with high prices. The reason we face this is because of low capacity in virtually every sector worldwide. The financial system that we have based all the wealth of the world will collapse. It always was going to, what with the system of interest rates and it's inflationary effect. On a more basic level, the collapse we face is due to the everyday demands of a large human population on Earth, where each human organism expects to have their own car, house and appliances, consumes goods with exdpensive packaging transported sometimes thousands of miles by container ships.

The WWF estimates that we currently consume the equivalent of 1.4 planets. If that doesn't make sense, the fossil fuels we're using are 'stored energy'. It's like using up a credit card when you have no money in the bank. You just can't keep on doing this. Take away our fuel inheritance and we're short of half a planet for 7 billion voracious predators/consumers to run our shopping malls, suburbia and everything else.

Power supply is a problem worldwide, from Pakistan to Britian, from China to South Africa. High food prices are affecting everyone, not only because of higher fuel price inputs, but because of climate change and pollution as well. The poor will suffer, and increase in number. Crime and unemployment will increase.

In the future we will need to become farmers, and become a community again. Computers and the internet can keep our communication and inefficiencies down. We will live more locally and the world will become a lot larger. Superstores will become extinct. Airlines will fall out of the sky. Trains will become big, so too streetcars. You will be restricted at the market to what can be grown or made locally. Life will be about what is essential, addressing fairly basic our needs on a large scale, not so much about convenience or what we 'want'

But the emphasis should be on this kindset: a permanent decline. A permament contraction. A strong likelihood of war, and a nuclear exchange as resource depletion begins to bite on a planetwide scale. This is not the distant future, it's now. It's happening.

Do you expect petrol prices to come down again after a few months? Then clearly you still have not heard or understood a word being spoken or written. You have no idea how serious our collective situation. Wake up!

Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines

2008:Year of the Boob

8. It is a symbol for two breasts, and for infinity. Take your pick. Essentially we are talking about the same thing. It's easy, after all, isn't it, to get lost...in infinity I...er...mean.

Galadriel: The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.

Whether we take a pair of boobies or infinity into this year as our mascot, the results ought to be the same. It is going to be a compelling year, and a long hard year, but probably not for the right reasons.

Financially we're all going to take a hit. Convenience. That's a nice term. What is it again? There will be chronic uncertainty in 2008, far worse than we are used to. We're going to see a reveral in fortunes, and a trend away from Tabloid Junk towards a more serious, a more conscious view of the world. This will be schizophrenic at first, as we'd developed this habit over some time.

But as the walls close in, it will seem painfully ironic that the games we are playing (shoot to kill) and the movies we are watching (violent, apocalyptic scenarios) are hitting uncomfortably close to home. News and documentaries as well as Nature content will start to get our attention.

2008 will be the year that it all starts coming off the rails. It will feel like it is getting hot, and a lot is happening at the same time, and spinning out of control. There will be weather records, and financial carnage. There will be civilian strife. To add to this, food will just become horrendously unaffordble, and we will finally begin to realise that easy motoring doesn't have a future, and worse, that we have nothing to slot in - conveniently - in its place.

The Year of the Boob will be a long walk, and not a walk in the park. At the end of it will not be freedom, but a visa resembling Mordor. We will come to know what Frodo felt like carrying the ring. The ring in this sense represents war, famine, disease. The temptation will be to put it on, all will be on this knife edge, and to not resist will mean Men will fall.