Predictions for 2003

What does the New Year hold? Lew Rockwell asks some of the smartest people he knows.

While I would like to give an optimistic forecast for the coming year, I fear that between the Alan Greenspan's Federal Reserve and George W. Bush's war machine, the prospects for real recovery are dim. I predict that Congress will pass another bogus "stimulus" package while adding to the real burdens of the economy by (1) soaking up available credit by running huge budget deficits and (2) not permitting the needed liquidation that must occur if the economy is to recover.

On the war front, while I believe the United States will achieve a semi-victory in war over Iraq, there will be the usual loose ends, as the "nation building" teams trying to rebuild Iraq will run into trouble. However, the USA may force Iraq to pay for its "rebuilding" by turning on the oil spigots there and driving down the world price of oil. Bush will sadly find that there are no easy "solutions" to putting the evil genie back in the bottle once it has been let out.

William L. Anderson, Ph.D. [send him mail], teaches economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland, and is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Hans Hoppe will win the Nobel Prize in economics. Tom DiLorenzo will be given the Nobel Prize in history (ok, ok, they’ll start one, just so that he can win it). Lew Rockwell will be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. The next Nobel laureate in literature will be Paul Cantor.

Butler Shaffer, Marc Victor and Stephan Kinsella will become Supreme Court judges. The Mises Institute will be the recipient of a donation of $1 billion. Milton Friedman and the Cato Institute will embrace libertarianism. Hillary will renounce socialism. Trent Lott, and our journalists and pundits, will learn the difference between federalism and racism. The Libertarian Party will win the next election.

All schools will be privatized (no vouchers, please, we’re libertarians) and Johnny will learn how to read. Roads and highways will be turned over to the private sector (and traffic fatalities will plummet). The minimum wage will be rescinded, and teenaged unemployment will fall sharply. Rent controls will end, and with it much of the problem of homelessness. All drugs will be legalized, and crime rates, and incarceration, will decline precipitously. The U.S. will adopt the policy of non-intervention in foreign affairs espoused by George Washington in his "Farewell Address," all troops will be confined to the territorial U.S., and terrorism against the country will become a thing of the past. Welfare will be rescinded and standard of living for the poor will improve, thanks to free markets and voluntary charity.

Bureaucrats in Washington D.C. will build gigantic monuments to honor Murray N. Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises.

Dr. Block [send him mail] is a professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans.

I know this for a fact because that’s the date of my book bashing the teacher union and the economics of government schools is published. In the past, my books’ pub dates have proved reliable indicators, as we say in the stock market – 1987 Crash on the day my Canadian book was published in the U.S.; Oklahoma City bombing on the day my immigration book came out.

The one thing that puzzles me is how they’re going to keep this going long enough to re-elect W. (Does it have some other purpose?) Except for the fact that I have no plans to write another book, I would have said that, at the last minute, the Iraq attack would be delayed. As it is, I presume they will have to go after Saudi Arabia or Syria or, oh, somebody. In which case, we should be hearing a lot about a new terrorist country by the end of 2003.

Reimposing imperial rule throughout the Middle East will eventually lead to Algerian-type guerilla war/Intifada directed at the occupiers. It may take time, and in the interim there will be a lot of gloating. In fact, there will be gloating whatever happens.

Joel Mowbray will leave National Review. He will be said "to want to write a book." Bill Buckley will start to putrefy. He will be said to "want to write a book." In his case, another book will inevitably appear. Don’t they always?

Seriously: by year end, I expect inflation will have re-established itself. If you look at a real, total cumulative return chart on T-bills and bonds, they’re about as high above the long-run regression line as they’ve been in the last 100 years. Deflation would drive them higher, i.e. into unprecedented territory. It might happen, but it would be unique in the history of the Federal Reserve. I bet it won’t.

Another twelve interest rate reductions will leave the Funds rate at minus 2 3/4% and Brazil will ask the IMF to intervene to prop up the Dollar, saying flight capital flooding into Rio from the US is threatening to drive the Real up to levels where its export competitiveness will be lost.

The Tooth Fairy will leave enough gold under every child's pillow to bail out all the struggling bullion banks' short derivative positions.

Indiana Jones and Lara Croft will team up to unearth an original copy of a fabled document, lost for some 215 years, upon whose very existence many eminent commentators had cast doubt. This scroll, curiously titled the 'Constitution', will unleash such a frenzy of right-thinking in time for the 2004 elections that Paul Wolfowitz will warn the CFR "to avoid war at almost all costs, lest it lead naturally to impoverishment, tyranny, and the destruction of the necessary physical foundations of republican virtue". A penitent Dick Cheney will appear in his nuclear-hardened bunker on 'Through the Keyhole' to say Americans have a Republic, if they can keep it.

Zhou Xiaochuan, the new Bank of China governor, will state that Malaysian PM Mahatir's idea for a gold-backed currency is the only true route to prosperity for the masses. Building on his initiative, General Secretary Hu Jintao, speaking on behalf of the Free Economic Area of All the Chinas, will persuade Euro-Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian PM Atal Vajpayee, Unified Korean President Roh and the surprise victor of the snap election just run in Japan, New Reform Alliance leader Shintaro Ishihara, formerly Tokyo governor, to prepare conjoint legislation abolishing all tariffs, quotas, subsidies, income and capital gains taxes, the welfare state and fractional reserve banking, issuing copies of "Human Action" to all school children under the slogan "May a thousand entrepreneurs blossom."

In the UK, a return to the country's ancestral Celtic roots will see true representative government re-established, based upon secure property rights and equality before the law. Importing best practice from the pre-Christian province of Galatia, the elective tribal governments will send delegates to a Confederate grand council to decide upon regional disputes and matters of foreign policy only, with final arbitration being in the hands of those fully independent keepers of law and torch-bearers of science, the Druids.

Inspired by their example, the community of free sovereign nations will next adopt the Celtic methodology of conflict resolution. All differences which prove insoluble under peaceful procedures will be settled – in the best, rational Celtic fashion – by single combat between the leaders of the disputants, or their selected champions. Shortly thereafter, the last and briefest war in recorded history will end when 'Prince of Darkness' Richard Perle turns tail and runs from a mano-a-mano with Kim Jong-Il's favourite pre-teen gymnast, to loud derision and a chorus of catcalls of 'Chickenhawk!'.

Sean Corrigan [send him mail] writes from London on the financial markets, and edits the daily Capital Letter and the Website Capital Insight. He is co-manager of the Bermuda-based Edelweiss Fund.

Bush will attack Iraq. Bush will attack Iran. Bush will attack North Korea. Bush will attack Brazil. Bush will attack Zimbabwe. Bush will attack Ukraine. Bush will attack Bolivia. Bush will attack Latvia. Bush will attack Angorra. Bush will attack San Marino. Bush will attack Burkina Faso. Bush will attack Sri Lanka. Bush will attack Bangladesh. Howard Dean will announce for president. John Kerry will announce for president. John Edwards will announce for president. Joseph Lieberman will announce for president. Hillary Clinton will announce for president. Chuck Schumer will announce for president. Richard Gephardt will announce for president. Nancy Pilosi will announce for president. Wilber Mills will announce for president. Harold Stassen will announce for president. Marion Barry will announce for president. Rev. Al Sharpton will announce for president. Bush will attack Trinidad. Evan Bayh will announce.... Bush will attack.... etc. etc.

Richard Cummings [send him mail] taught international law at the Haile Selassie I University and before that, was Attorney-Advisor with the Office of General Counsel of the Near East South Asia region of U.S.A.I.D, where he was responsible for the legal work pertaining to the aid program in Israel, Jordan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is the author of a new novel, The Immortalists, as well as The Pied Piper – Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream, and the comedy, Soccer Moms From Hell. He holds a Ph.D. in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University and is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

Jonah Goldberg will subscribe to the Lewrockwell.com daily e-mail, and he will have this to say about it: "I can't make up my mind which side of the fence to sit on. It appears that libertarianism may be the #1 fad in 2003, and therefore the quickest road to popular appeal, so I think I'll give it a whirl."

U.S. politicos will find yet another foreign adversary, beyond Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, to be their new poster child for helping to justify their warmaking activities – perhaps some guy in Pakistan or India that George W. never heard of before.

The Caesars of the U.S. Empire will find yet another foreign land where American-style "democracy" desperately needs to take a foothold in order to keep intact the growth of the military-industrial complex, complete with its modern aspirations of peacekeeping, feeding the entire third world, and propping up third-world despots in gold-laden palaces.

The masses will finally figure out that there is no discernable difference between Republicans and Democrats.

Self-hating, left-libertarian, white apologists that call themselves "anarchists" will wake up to the reality that their unremitting accusations of "racism" – directed toward those who champion the conventions of voluntary association – are mere recitals of the State's morality code, and that necessarily makes them collectivist boobs, shills of the State, and dunderheads of the first degree.

The war on Iraq will get a snappy, Orwellian name – something to the tune of "Operation Democratic Development" or "It’s for the Children."

I will suddenly awake in a cold sweat, one night, having dreamt that Larry Kudlow just released his latest book: This Economist's View: Eager for World Peace, Bearishness, and the Impending DOW 2,000.

SUVs will sell better than ever, greatly angering all the little, anti-SUV dictators running around trying to decree their choices unto others. And if we're really lucky, the Japanese will start "dumping" their SUVs over here, thereby making prices even lower. If we are exceptionally lucky, Wal-Mart will start selling American and Japanese SUVs, trucks, and vans at super, super low prices.

Individuals throughout the U.S. will obtain two stunning bits of knowledge that will come to them in an overnight coup of their brain by little purple people sent to zap them with a morsel of provisional wisdom in their unconscious, REM-like state: #1 – Michael Milken did not commit any crimes, and #2 – "insider trading" is not a crime.

Based on the above, consumers, as a whole, will rush out to K-Mart (before they go out of business) and buy millions and millions of dollars worth of Martha Stewart products – towels, spatulas, cookie sheets, bedspreads, etc. – to support her fight against the evil regulatory State and its corrupt "insider trading" machinations.

Lance Armstrong will win his 5th Tour de France in a row, further infuriating the French, who cannot believe that some American cowboy from the Republic of Texas is conquering their homeboys on their own turf.

I will publish my first book – finally. (And it will not be a book of predictions.)

Karen De Coster, CPA, [send her mail] is a paleolibertarian freelance writer, graduate student in Austrian Economics, and a business professional from Michigan. Her first book is currently in the works. See her Mises Institute archive for more online articles, and check out her website, along with her blog.

As his last hurrah, Greenspan will pump up the money supply at unprecedented rates in the latter part of the year in preparation for George W. Bush's reelection campaign. His legacy will therefore be a triple-dip recession.

At about the same time, Bush will talk endlessly about "speeding up" his almost-nonexistent tax cuts, but no real tax relief will be forthcoming.

Bush and the Fox News Channel will at long last get their war on Iraq. Like all wars in human history, its results and effects will be utterly unpredictable, highlighting once again just how ignorant and arrogant all the neocon warmongers are, with all their self-assured predictions.

The war will become a massive recruiting tool for Middle East terrorists, who will then step up their mischief.

Harry Jaffa will be proven to be an even bigger academic fraud than Bellesiles the anti-gun fraud.

Jonah Goldberg will run out of snide, childish, smartass comments, which will thankfully cause him to become speechless.

LewRockwell.com will surpass all other conservative and libertarian web sites in readership, and we will see Lew interviewed on CSPAN and The O'Reilly Factor as a result. The clueless Bill O'Reilly will look at Lew with the vacant stare of a wild dog.

The efforts by George Bush to involve the United States in war with Iraq will meet with strong resistance in Congress. A few Congressmen, led by Ron Paul, will recall that the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war. They will not be put off by assurances from their "leaders" that Bush has deigned to consult them.

John Gray will write a book claiming that classical liberalism led to both fascism and communism. A new system of ideas is needed: Only government support for active euthanasia can save us, he will contend. I will denounce the book in The Mises Review, after which Ralph Raico will claim that I have written another puff-piece for Gray. I will respond, citing Ron Paul, that I do not have the authority to declare war on Gray; I await a declaration by Congress.

Fox News will hire Netanyahu to work for it as a foreign "conservative" correspondent. David Frum and/or Jonah Goldberg will receive a top-level public relations job at the White House. The Bush administration will move even closer to endorsing racial quotas in an effort to reach out. President Bush will issue next year a Kwanzaa greeting even more obsequious than the one his office just produced. Republicans will proclaim this a compassionate, conservative document. The US regime will invade Iraq and after overthrowing the government will set up a viceregency pending the end of the world. In the coming year Bill Buckley will look even more decrepit and sound even more like Jonah Goldberg.

The Southern Poverty Law Center will add the Boy Scouts of America to its list of hate-groups, declaring that "Their rule against gay members proves that the Boy Scouts of America is a hate-group. The unwholesome beliefs of this organization strike at the very foundations of our democratic society."

Administrators at Vanderbilt University in Nashville will order the removal of all magnolia plants from campus grounds. This action is in response to a student’s complaint that the magnolia plant is closely associated with the antebellum South and therefore a painful reminder of slavery.

Martha Burk, chair of the National Council of Women’s Organization, will demand that the American Association of Tissue Banks require sperm banks to change their policy that only males may be sperm donors. Ms. Burk will say: "This rule is yet another regressive policy that places women’s rights in peril and prevents true equality for women."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson will petition the US Securities and Exchange Commission to require that the ethnic composition of a corporation’s stockholders "looks like America." The SEC should compel corporations to donate shares of stock to minority groups so that each group’s ownership will equal the group’s percent of the total population. Jackson’s refrain: "We don’t want schlock! We want stock!"

An excited Barbra Streisand will praise Burns and PBS with these words: "The Clintons were the finest couple to occupy the White House since Teddy and Eleanor Roosevelt."

In December, President Bush and the First Lady will host a celebration on the White House lawn for a ceremonial lighting of seven large candles representing the guiding principles of Kwanzaa. The president will then issue a proclamation officially making the seven days of Kwanzaa national holidays.

Gail Jarvis [send him mail], a CPA living in Beaufort, SC, is an advocate of the voluntary union of states enumerated by the founders.

An American airliner will be shot down by terrorist missile. More American airlines will declare bankruptcy, and some will go out of business altogether. The number of flights will decrease and ticket prices will increase.

Mankind will continue down the path of energy suicide by stubbornly and ignorantly stifling the development of nuclear power.

The reach of the Internet and the increasing ubiquitousness of digital information will continue to chip away at the efficacy and relevance of copyright law. The Supreme Court, however, will uphold the constitutionality of the Copyright Term Extension Act.

The LSU Tigers will once again fail to finish the college football season in the top 10.

The Mises Institute will continue to prosper and grow in popularity and influence.

Here's what the magic 8-ball told me. The third Lord of the Rings movie will top box offices in December. The federal government will grow larger and more burdensome. US forces will conduct military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israeli soldiers will shoot Palestinian civilians, and Palestinians will blow up Israeli civilians. Neoconservatives will try to do something dastardly to Paul Gottfried.

The magic 8-ball doesn't lie, so you can take those predictions to the bank. As for everything else, I predict that the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court will not be a white male – sorry Antonin Scalia. President Bush's first nominee for the Court, replacing Rehnquist, also will not be a white male. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden's whereabouts and status will remain unknown, and Saddam Hussein will still be in power by the end of the year. All of which will work to President Bush's advantage going into the 2004 election, just as Karl Rove has planned it.

Daniel McCarthy [send him mail] is a graduate student in classics at Washington University in St. Louis.

The United States will become increasingly irrelevant in East Asia as South Korea and Japan become aware that the United States is either unwilling or unable to deal with the new regional realities of emerging China and nuclear North Korea. South Korea’s Roh, and Japan’s Koizumi will become increasingly dependent on anti-American rhetoric as the global depression persists in Asia. Kim Jong Il will continue to be far more dangerous and unpredictable than Saddam Hussein could ever be.

John Paul II will die, and the conservative third-world Cardinals, who now make up over 40 percent of the College of Cardinals will reject all Italian candidates, but will select a pope that will be a conservative on contraception, homosexuality, and ordination of women, sending liberal Catholics into fits of rage. Much talk of canonizing John Paul II will circulate sending traditionalists into fits of rage. Americans might finally figure out that no one at the Vatican cares what they think.

Chaldeans (Iraqi Christians) will be butchered in Iraq following the American invasion, as Islamic fundamentalists, freed from Saddam’s control, become regional warlords.

The Democratic Party will continue to be utterly irrelevant, but many Democrats won’t mind since the Republicans will be accomplishing most of their policy goals for them.

In 2003 the story will be confirmed that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a secret Israeli plan designed to involve the U.S. long-term in the Arab-Israeli conflict, cynically sold to the Bush White House by neoconservatives as a reelection strategy.

Taking its cue from President Bush’s throttling of Trent Lott, the Republican outreach to preferred minorities, and the precedent of its own 1992 ruling on Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court will decide that 37 years of preferential treatment on the basis of race has given preferred minorities quota rights under the doctrine of adverse possession or squatters’ rights.

In recognition of the superior legal position of preferred minorities, whites will be required to tip their hats, address preferred minorities as sir and move to the back of the bus.

The Republicans’ share of the white vote will decline by more than the Republicans’ share of the preferred minority vote rises.

The Department of Homeland Security will adopt the practice of federal airport security screening and refuse to distinguish between Muslim terrorists and loyal citizens. The first people arrested under the Patriot’s Act will be patriots.

American citizens will begin fleeing southwest border areas with Mexico as armies of illegals march across their properties unopposed by the superpower in Washington.

Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

1. The Feds will announce further red, orange, fuscia, and paisley "emergencies."

2. Whatever draconian measures the Feds propose to meet these "emergencies," Charles Hammer-of-the-Krauts will write that even more should be done because, after all, the government is sovereign and has every right to cut off our legs, if in its wisdom, only this will meet the threat, whatever it is.

3. Jonah Goldberg will once more display the depths of his ignorance of the history of the right wing movement in America. Paul Gottfried will respond and Goldberg will dismiss him as a crank.

5. The "yoots" at anti-state.com will continue to read nothing but each others’ missives and will think themselves great theoreticians as a result of this wide reading.

6. Freerepublic.com will collapse under the sheer weight of the stupidity generated there daily. It will be reborn as Fascists-R-Us.com.

7. Larry "Three-Dollar" Kudlow will demand further infusions of paper money inflation to restore prosperity.

8. Victor Davis Hanson will tell us at great length how all classical writers of the Better Sort lived for war, loved war, grooved on carnage, and indeed set war well before the various vices for which they are famous.

9. W will make incoherent statements in a peculiar form of English thought to be related to Meso-Gothic. When his constant hectoring about "terraces" is misunderstood, Americans will take out home improvement loans, thereby kick-starting the economy.

10. On high school campuses Future Farmers of America will lose ground to a new service club, Future Straussians of America.

11. Barring the arrival of new talent from the British Isles and Australia, American country music will linger in its present awful rut.

12. Every elder statesman not currently useful to the Neo-Con establishment will be accused of hateful thoughts, "racism," and failure to repudiate all American history prior to Ronald Reagan.

13. Michael Ledeen will call for Trotskyist Permanent Revolution everywhere. As a reward, he will be named head of the US-UK Occupation Regierung in Mesopotamia. His new slogan will be "Umsiedlung der Palestiner."

14. The various "wars" will go well during 2003. The bad news will come in, in 2004.

15. Sundry writers on Neo-Con websites will ride their hobby-horse of "Anti-Americanism" until the poor thing dies of exhaustion. They will find a new hobby-horse.

Hillary declares her candidacy for president while Democrats rally around her creating a renewed sense of exuberance among American socialists. After the takeover of Iraq, George W. and company frenzy up the American people on the great threat to the freedom of the universe posed by the Republic of Yemen. After another terrorist attack, later learned to be caused by a disgruntled postal worker, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 is repealed in a little publicized section of the "Free the World Act of 2003." On a technicality, John Ashcroft loses a case defending the constitutionality of mandatory transdermal implants for all newborns against an attorney who died several years earlier. After Chief Justice Rehnquist retires, George W.’s nominee has only minor difficulty with the confirmation process after stating publicly, "I never cared much for the 4^th Amendment anyway."

Somewhere in the country, another person thinks about joining the Libertarian Party – after several hours with Harry Browne he joins. The lewrockwell.com website grows in popularity largely because an ever increasing number of federal agents monitor the posted articles. However, the agents take no action for fear that Dr. Walter Block will write something nasty about them.

Marc J. Victor is a practicing criminal defense attorney with the law firm of Victor & Hall, P.L.C. in Mesa, Arizona. He can be reached through his law firm website.

Osama bin Laden will continue to stay dead, although more doctored audio tapes with some guy who sounds like him might show up.

The economy will continue to splutter, along with the Dow. Lawrence Kudlow will never again in his life mention that he ever said the stock market could reach 30,000, or even 50,000.

Max Boot, Rush Limbaugh, Jonah Goldberg, William Kristol and William Bennett will not join the military.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn and Russell Kirk will continue to spin in their graves because of the level to which National Review has sunk.

Bob Wallace [send him mail], a former newspaper reporter and editor, and an incurable lover of puns from St. Louis, is now traveling the country.

Where 2002 was a year of wars being threatened, the new year will be a year of peaceful, diplomatic resolutions to the major trouble spots in the world, most especially Iraq and North Korea. Baghdad's willingness to cooperate with the United Nations in every regard has made it impossible for the War Party in Washington to insist on war to oust Saddam Hussein. A year from now Saddam will still be in power, having been cleared by the inspection team, which would make it impossible for the President to pull the trigger. North Korea has been trying to get our attention, as it wishes to rejoin the family of nations and prosper to the level of South Korea. Here again, Secretary of State Colin Powell is amassing points on the way to a Nobel Peace Prize. As these black clouds dissipate, Wall Street will respond positively.

Hmmmmm. 2003? A good year for Burgundy or Beaujolais maybe? Lew said he wanted to know what's going to happen before 6:00 pm, 12/29/02, so as to have time to "phone broker and bookie."

(Has he forgotten Lord Dunsany's little play where the chap calls up, I think, the Spirit of Laughter and gets the London Times for the year ahead, takes notes on the pony races, and reaches finally the next day's paper at the bottom of the heap, which carries his own obit?)

I’ll predict that by the end of 2003 we'll at least and at last know whether or not Bush invaded Iraq. If so, things in the world and at home will be in an unparalleled mess. If not, Hillary will be booming along in her campaign to take over, talking endlessly about the economy. Bush will be longing for the security of Crawford.

But there is always the possibility that some of the “lesser breeds without the law” will want some input into our destiny. Then the “unparalleled mess” here and worldwide will be even worse, very likely the official start of “The Coming Age of Murk.” I have trouble imaging positive scenarios for 2003.