Get Out Your Short Term Crystal Balls And Tell Us What's Up In 2007.

MayorBob.

Posted to Etcetera on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:37:55 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

The Economist puts on its clairvoyance cap and offers its best guess at what's coming round the bend at us in 2007.  Some of this stuff is premium content (and perhaps someone with a subscription can let us in on what the magazine had to say about France after Chirac, quo vadis Iraq, and why the Hezbollah-Israeli war of 2006 might have profound implications for Israel in 2007.  But, a lot of the articles are free and they say that 2007 will still be all about Bush, when it's not about mafias or the web as a serial killer.

John Micklethwait says it's hard to be optimistic about 2007, what with all the problems we face on the global stage.  He believes one thing the world is on the verge of having is a vacuum in political leadership; Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac won't be there soon and the new leadership in Japan will be focused on internal politics as the Chinese will be focused on their economy.  And then there's George W. Bush - he'll still be there.  But, he's going to continue to be stuck to the tarbaby he created when Iraq was invaded.  We went over some of this stuff recently, but our view asked for an approach over the next two years and Micklethwait is looking at 2007 and believes, if Bush doesn't hit the track running soon, his historical legacy will be shot.  He suggests a few things to do.  First, he suggests that assume his position as the world's senior economic leader and get with the unglamorous business of rescuing the Doha trade round from failure.  Peace in the Middle East might be nice, but Bush might be carrying too much baggage to do anything worthwhile there.  Thus, Micklethwait sees the environment as the last, best hope for George Bush.  This, of course, means learning to admit that climate change is a reality and some sort of Kyoto Protocol-like approach needs to be agreed upon.

Misha Glenny looks at 2007 and says it could be a very good year for gangsters of all types.  He begins by saying which gangsters might not be having a good year and finds the gangsters of Russia and Eastern Europe might have their styles cramped by virtue of crackdowns from their respective governments.  Elsewhere, it's pretty much a laissez faire world out there.  Afghan opium production is and will continue to be on the rise.  Kidnapping and corruption are profit centers in Iraq with most of the earnings ending up in Jordan.  Glenny points out that, due to the perversity of marijuana laws, Canada is now "home to the largest number of criminal syndicates in the world " - a distinction which could end if Canadians managed to rationalize their pot laws.  One of the criminal enterprises officials in the EU should take seriously is something called Missing Trader Intra-Community VAT Fraud (all pdf docs) -- a (US)$65 billion a year enterprise.

Finally, Chris Anderson says that the web, just as it did with the print media, music, and the movies, will make life a lot more interesting for television in 2007.  Anderson observes that sitcoms are becoming an extinct species on television shows and he sees more pressure coming from the short, brilliant, fascinating, and seemingly free content available on the internet on outlets like youtube.com or Google videos.  The product offered by the web is transforming audiences from consumers of half hour to hour long comedy or drama to snackers of the two to three minute videos.  Anderson predicts that when the online revenue model matches up with the content that people want to watch "the house of cards that is the economics of the broadcast TV industry will come crashing down."