I feel like I’m one of a handful of people who didn’t go out and tie one on last night, it’s so slow around the ’sphere. That’s OK, we Industry people always used to say that “New Year’s Eve and St. Patty’s Day are for the amateurs.” Vitamins, water and meat will help with the hangover, kiddies.

Anyway- Jonathan wants to know your predictions. I’m too lazy to come up with my own, but I’d like to modify his, as it’s an interesting list. I confess right now that my most fevered wish is to be as wrong in my gloominess as I was in 2006 with respect to the elections.

2007 will not be a year of transition in Iraq, despite the clear mandate of the electorate and the determination of many Democrats in Congress for it to be so. The level of American troops in Iraq at the end of 2007 will be similar to the level at the beginning of the year — significantly more than 100,000 — while, tragically, large numbers of Americans, as well as Iraqis, will continue to lose their lives in the course of the country’s violence.

Can’t disagree with this one at all. Except to say: 2007 will be the Return to the Heart of Darkness. Every indicator I can find tells me that Iraq is reaching truly literary levels of madness, slaughter, and horror. We don’t get to read all the details, and when we do they’re often delayed by weeks or months. But simply, two things are going to be at play this year: our forces and the leadership will realize that only blood awaits us, we can’t even leave without a lot of it, and “victory” is an utterly lost cause. Despair leads to poor leadership, but that is what military decision makers will feel, and process, this year.  Read more 

Another good catch from S&M . With the looming invasion of Iran the markets are going to be devastating to the genral public.

Hedge funds can arrest the development of whole economies, and they have the potential to crash the financial system. It has almost happened before. In 1998 the Fed persuaded the “Fourteen Families” (an apposite Mafia reference) of Wall Street - the major banks - to cough up money for a $3.6bn bailout for Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund whose bets went wrong. The Fed said at the time that LTCM’s failure had been abrupt and disorderly and had posed “unacceptable risks to the American economy”.  Read more