Prediction: default. Location: America.
Submitted by brian s hall on 13 April, 2011 - 19:52
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The Smartphone Wars is called that not just because it's a multi-trillion dollar global market with numerous players battling it out over money, share, profits, victory. It's also called the smartphone wars because the process of getting to 1 billion, then 2 billion, then several more billion smartphone users will remake the planet. It alters jobs and job opportunities, modes of interaction, how we learn, where we can work, access to information, existing industries and cultures.
Which is why in the early days of this site I laid out various predictions for the year 2016. And I had reasons for why I chose the year 2016:
And the future starts in 2016. This is the year of the Olympic Games, held for the first time ever, in the "developing world"; Brazil. This is the year of the end of the potential second term of the transformative presidency of Barack Obama. This is the year of a billion plus smartphones and the demarcation of wealth creation and opportunity shifting from the old to the new. This is the year India rockets a man into space. This is the year, 2016, when all entitlement/non discretionary spending consumes nearly 90 cents of every US government dollar. This is the year I predict the following will happen (if not sooner).
Sure, it seems naive now, quaint, but when I wrote those words, in 2009, presuming 1 billion smartphones by 2016 was quite the leap of faith.
One of several predictions on my 2016 list was:
At least one major candidate for President of at least one (of the two) major political parties will take the public position that America should 'cancel' its debt to China. [6 Feb 2010]
Today, Business Insider takes noted bank analyst, Chris Walen, to task for suggesting that America default on its debt.
Fair enough. They will come around. I have no doubt about that. Not simply because our debt is a noose around our economy, our future, our preferred lifestyle. But that whole TARP thing? The bank bailouts? The revolving door between Wall Street executive suites and the Obama White House all taught us one thing. Taught the rest of the world, too, if they were paying attention:
At the end of the day, Americans are okay with walking away from their debts.