Yes and Not Yes

Rebel Yid has posted a list of random predictions. I’d like to address each one of them.

McCain will defeat Obama by 6 % points. McCain will be propelled by significant reduction in troop deployments and successes in Iraq. Obama will suffer further setbacks after debates with McCain.

Can an old, conservative white dude beat a young, liberal black guy named Barack Hussein Obama? As the election process progresses, Obama will lose the halo and McCain will prove himself in debate, but I think 6% is far too generous. I think McCain will win by 3% at most.

Oil will be below $100 per barrel in 6 months. High prices will deflate when market absorbs news of new supplies, and financially sound alternatives; particularly improvements in battery technology.

No argument here. The higher oil goes, the faster it will fall.

The mortgage banking debacle will bottom on the news of several consolidations and purchases of regional banks by larger players, one of them being Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway and its companies.

Yes, there will be a bottom, and yes, the bottoming process will most likely begin with consolidations and purchases by larger players. I wonder if Berkshire will purchase a bank? Wells Fargo? Wachovia? SunTrust?

Food prices will spike on the Midwestern floods, but will recover quicker than the market expects and drops below current costs.

Interest rates will slowly but steadily climb as the dollar recovers strength, oil prices reverse their climb, and speculative premiums disappear in commodities.

If the dollar can find any sort of meaningful strength, oil and commodities will reverse to the downside.

The price of hybrids will fall as production increases to satisfy higher demand and the costs of better battery technologies are spread over the larger consumer base. New delivery systems and business models will also reduce the price of battery driven automobiles.

Democrats will cave on the energy front and support more domestic drilling, more refining capacity and more nuclear power plants. This will happen largely as a result of these energy issues becoming the forefront of the election, and will be seen as a major reason for Obama’s defeat.

I’m not so sure about the price of hybrids falling this year, but perhaps next year. I also agree that Dems will cave on the energy front. A lot of “conservative” Dems were elected two years ago and I think this group is far more amenable to domestic drilling, increasing refinery capacity and even nuclear power.

Global warming will become a dead issue under new evidence and climate trends. It will quietly go away as every other environmental doomsday scenario has.

It’s hard to imagine that global warming will ever go away.

A new model for higher education will start to make current college institutional structures obsolete, as higher tuition costs do not translate into better educations and the college value paradigms collapse.

Foreign language education becomes a booming business.

A new model for higher education will eventually become dominant, but this will be a trend that will be at least three decades in the making. Also, foreign language education will NOT become a booming business any time soon.

Iran unseats Ahmadinejad and adopts a more pro western stance, but still out of pride does not want to reverse its progress on atomic energy. The political change will be viewed as the most successful application of an economic boycott in history.

I’d like to believe this will happen, but it’s hard for me to imagine that the mullahs would have allowed Ahmadinejad to be elected if they did not approve of his views. But when Ahmadinejad is replaced, his successor will be much more moderate in tone.