In my last column I wrote that humanity is in transition from one Age to another and that the global financial collapse is a painful part of that transition.  This occurs during any major historical transition period.  In addition I wrote:

“There are four words that keep coming back to me as I view the landscape of what lies ahead in 2009 and beyond.  They are contraction, cleansing, reorganization and transformation.  It is these four words to keep in mind as you read the forecasts here and look around you”

I repeat that because most of the economic predictions below are about contraction and cleansing.  However I am not a pessimist as I believe that we are in a process of reorganization that can lead to transformation.  Please keep that in mind as you read on.

The U.S. economy has been in a recession for close to a year, with the fourth quarter being one of the worst quarters on record.  During this fourth quarter the global economy joined the U.S.  When all the numbers come in for this quarter they will show a major contraction probably in the range of 4-7%.  In a column in mid-October, I wrote:

“We will witness one of the worst holiday retail seasons in history on a year to year comparison basis.  People who feel that they have no control over the performance of their investments will realize that the only control they have is in the area of spending which they will …

We are coming to an end of the greatest financial age of sports in history.  The twelve years between 1996 and 2008 were years when the money around sports exploded beyond any precedent era.  This also means that, going forward, the economics around sports in general will decline, at least for the next 5-8 years if not longer.

The bookends for these 12 years of explosive financial growth are the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and the Beijing Olympics of 2008.  The Atlanta Olympics were the first post-cold war Olympics and, being held in the U.S. created a huge marketing platform.  The Beijing Olympics was the coming out party for the most populous country in the world and gave  recognition to China as a major player on the world’s geopolitical and financial stages.

In 1996 cable television had become a dominant media force in the U.S.  ESPN, and all of its networks, was beginning to take its’ place as the behemoth of sports television.  Regional sports networks, TBS and TNT soon joined the party and it seemed that sports were everywhere on TV.  The broadcast networks and all of these cable entities competed for the rights of all major sports.  The fees paid to the NFL, MLB, the NBA, and the college football conferences exploded.  This led to dramatically increased player salaries, advertising rates and, for the consumer, rapidly increasing cable bills.  Of course it also led to much lower ratings as nothing was special any more.  Even though Monday Night Football on …

A global shift in consciousness has occurred during October.  Trust and confidence have given way to fear and uncertainty. Plans and expectations have been completely altered or dashed altogether.  Governments, entire industries, equity markets and the majority of the adult populations in the developed countries of the world are staring into a financial abyss that has no correlation to anything any of them have experienced (unless they are 80 years or older).

Governments separately, and then in consort struggle to stay ahead of a financial catastrophe they can’t quite fathom.  Hundreds of millions of people feel as thought they have been punched in the gut.  Standing on solid ground becomes a metaphor desperately longed for rather than a reality.  For every theory about what to do with one’s money there is an opposite one put forth.  Financial volatility seems omnipresent.   All of this has produced a shift in consciousness that is palpable.

When belief systems come under attack or are shown to be false, when institutional reliability becomes highly questionable,  when what used to work no longer does,  when it feels that events point to not just change but disruption, then it is time to do two things.

First, one must change one’s behavior.  As I have written here, it is clear that consumerism will take a severe hit and that the next two years will be a time of a massive economic downturn.  Thrift will become a dominant value in countries around the world.  Risk and debt will become four letter words …

A  column here two weeks ago placed the financial crisis within a historical context. The financial meltdown is part of the disruptive transition from the Information Age to the Shift Age.  We are moving through a period of turmoil when the old order is being replaced by a new order.  The nation state economic model is being replaced by a new global model.  We are at a time when the old ways no longer seem to work and yet the new realignments are not yet clear.

In the United States there have been three great waves that have arced over our society during the last 30 years.  The incredible run up in residential real estate values since the late 1970s was the first arc.  Except for a short period in the early 1980s and then again in the 1990s, the value of residential real estate seemed to go ever upward.  This of course created a great sense of wealth for those that benefited.  In the early part of this decade millions of households took advantage of historically low interest rates to take out billions of dollars of equity to use for purchases.  This 30 year cycle obviously came to a crashing halt two years ago.

The second arc was the historic bull market in stocks that started in 1982 and, with a correction in 1987 and again in 2000, continued to its historic high in 2007.  This arc also created a great sense of wealth for millions of …