If Trend-Spotters Are Right, 2001 Won’t Be Easy
If you remember, it was only a year ago that America was millennium-mad and drunk on the success of the dot-com.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com had just been named Time magazine’s person of the year. Wealthy technology executives were puzzling over whether to greet the new year in Fiji or the Antarctic. Hoteliers around the world were icing champagne and chilling caviar, and the air was thick with predictions about the century and the first decade.
Trend-meisters and journalists are revisiting their forecasts for 2001 as the new year approaches, but this time a more cautious atmosphere prevails. Taken together, the predictions in the Trends Journal’s winter 2001 issue are chilling.
“These are the most dire predictions we’ve ever come out with,” said Gerald Celente, editor and publisher of the journal, published by Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y. “The reason we did it is that we want people to understand they have to undertake recession-proofing strategies. . . . I’m not a gloom-and-doomer, but we felt it would be irresponsible for us not to let people know there’s a storm on the horizon.”
Here’s what the journal says may be in store for Americans:
A wave of anti-Americanism will sweep the world in coming years, and American pop culture, with its overtones of sex, consumerism and violence, will be regarded in other countries as “numbing and dangerous.”
A pre-recessionary period will begin next year, brought about by a market downturn and “the uncertainty of a contentious and polarizing presidency.”
Politicians and the public will reconsider the failed war on drugs.
Immigration will be a hot issue, as the economy and the job market slow worldwide.
America’s leadership role will be jeopardized by a “climate of conformity,” in which opinions are shaped by a homogenous media, financial markets with vested interests and a lack of open, unbiased debate on national issues.
A sinking economy will force Americans away from materialism, in many cases, into lifestyles of “involuntary simplicity.”
Russia will begin to retreat from its failed experiment in democracy and return to a state-run economy.
The economic downturn will result in companies slashing work forces still stressed by layoffs that began in the 1990s.
James J. Cramer, writing in a recent issue of New York magazine, seems to agree with the assessment of the economy, saying a recession will be the new president’s first crisis. Other bleak possibilities, according to Cramer, manager of a hedge fund and founder of The-Street.com: The real-estate boom, at least in New York City, will be a thing of the past in two months. Auto makers, stunned by poor sales, will institute massive layoffs.
“The personal computer complex--all the companies that devote themselves to that market--has faltered badly. The Net, last year’s savior, now seems like a bad joke,” he writes, later commenting that the so-called New Economy doesn’t look so bright and shiny anymore.”
His advice for the year: “Save a little more. Spend a little less.”
In the Utne Reader’s November-December issue, writers identify signs of the “coming revolution,” among them: the resurgence of citizens’ groups involved in causes from the environment to corporate reform; a greater respect for older people, as the population ages; the breakup of corporate power; and an increasing emphasis on spirituality and personal intuition.
Newsweek has devoted an entire special edition (“Issues 2001”) to keeping watch on the new year. Michael Hirsh, managing editor of the issue, says it is more “intellectual reconnaissance” than prognostication. Last year’s “Issues 2000,” however, was on the money in the predictions it did make, including Alan Greenspan’s reappointment as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the rise of Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen; and America Online Chairman Steve Case’s growing influence in Washington.
