Recently, people have been asking me a lot of questions about the fluctuating price of oil

“What is the price of oil going to be?”  “Was the recent price spike of $147 a barrel an all-time high that we won’t see again?”  And “Will the global economic slowdown drive the price of oil back down below $100?”

These are just some of the questions I have been asked in recent weeks.  The reason of course, as long time regular readers of this blog know, is that I have been consistently accurate in my predictions about the price of oil.   In 2006 I predicted $125 barrel oil in 2008 and $137 in 2009.  In the past year I predicted that oil would have a near term trading range of $95 – 135 per barrel but that while there would be little downward pressure below $95, there are many scenarios that would provide upward pressure above $135.  All of this price predictions flow from my view that we have entered the time …

The tag line of this blog is “A Future Look at Today”. It is not a political blog, nor is this a political column. I have assiduously kept politics out of this space leaving partisan conversations about campaign issues to others. There is a lot of heat around partisan politics and such heat can prevent clarity. As a futurist I think about the future by looking at the trends, patterns and dynamic forces that exist or are beginning to form. Readers of this column come here to get a sense of what might happen and why. That is the purpose of this column today.

In my “2007/2008″ column published on January 1, 2008, before the Iowa caucus, my forecast for the 2008 election was:

“.. it looks to this observer that 2008 will be a Democratic landslide year on the order of 1936 and 1964. Who will be the President in 2009? The junior senator from Illinois.”

This forecast was and is based upon history, and an analysis of certain forces currently reshaping the world today. As a number of people who eagerly made bets with me in 2007 can attest, I have been saying that Barack Obama would be the next President of the United States for more than a year. The reason is that he represents, embodies and is utilizing powerful new forces that are in ascendancy today.

Disintermediation

Disintermediation has been, and will continue to be one of the most powerful forces in the …

There have been many cultural changes so far in 2008.  Some of these changes are in response to the rapid increase in the price of oil and other commodities.  Some of these changes have been due to technological innovations.  In both cases new behavior patterns are being established that will, to some degree become permanent and will create new dynamics in certain industries.  Today we take a look at some of the predictions made here last January.

Shopping

The predicted shopping trends predicted were written with a long term view.  What is interesting is that the high price of gasoline has accelerated the speed of implementation of some of the forecasts.  On shopping, this column forecast:

“Shopping behavior will noticeably change……purchases will go down per capita. This will due to belt tightening but also due to the effect of the explosive growth that on-line sales will now have on off-line sales.”

This forecast was based both upon the long term up trend of on-line shopping but also upon the short term pessimism felt about the economy.  When people feel uncertain about their economic future they cut back on major expenses.  This explains the significant decline in auto sales this year and the bankruptcies of several retail chains.  What has been interesting is the reality that much of the growth in on-line sales at the expense of off-line sales is due to $4. a gallon gasoline.  When one can order on-line and have the merchandise delivered with low cost or free shipping, it is cheaper …

In the column “2007/2008″ published on January 1, 2008 I made a prediction concerning media that is worth revisiting.

At the beginning of the year the entertainment industry was in the middle of the writer’s strike.  I wrote:   “The writers’ strike in the entertainment business is now two months old. Its’ length, the animosity it has engendered and the immediate consequences of it are significant.  It has within it the seeds of structural and permanent change in the entertainment business……While the detailed outcome of the strike is not clear, what is clear is that it will have a permanent structural impact on the entertainment business.  It is a “change event” of some magnitude.”

This has turned out to be an accurate prediction.  All one has to do is take a look at the broadcast networks’ schedules to see the affects of the writer’s strike.  The once proud networks, home to magnificent dramas and classic comedy, now are reduced to filling evening after evening with reality competition shows.  Who wants to marry the farmer?  Who is the best celebrity dancer?  Which grossly overweight contestant will lose the most pounds?  These programs all fit under the umbrella title of ‘reality programming’ yet we know that they aren’t real in the true sense, but are staged, rehearsed, manipulated and highly edited.

Broadcast television through the decades was defined by great writing.  Think Rod Serling, Norman Lear,  Matt Groening and many others.  The networks stood for the highest quality television.  This quality came from great writing. The …

The economy has clearly become the primary subject today in America.  It has become so not only because of all the issues discussed in the prior column, but also because it has also become the number one issue for voters in this significant election year.

In the “Forecast for 2008″ column on January 9^th of this year I wrote:

“The U.S. Economy will not go into a recession as it has been traditionally defined.  There will be a bumpy ride, particularly in the first six months of the year. The traditional conversation will be an either/or discussion:  will there be a recession or not.  While there will most certainly be economic indicators that will point to recession, there will be others that do not.  The problem is not whether there is or is not a recession but rather the symptoms of a reorganization that is going on due to the flow to a global economy.  The view of the economic landscape is still too often looked at through traditional, increasingly less valid historical national measurements that seem to no longer apply. There will be pockets of recession, such as in the state of Michigan, but the economic bumps in the road in 2008 will not fit into traditional national recessionary measurements”

There are a couple of points to be made here.  First I was clearly underestimating the severity of the economic upheavals and equally importantly the negative mindset that would descend, courtesy of the media, upon the general sense of danger and risk.  …