What Is Going to Happen in 2019
avc.com
avc.com
I think it's an example of a Silicon Valley filter bubble.
Currently about 73% yes
[edit] I suppose there is the chance of him pulling a Nixon and resigning before impeachment, as well as the chance of him dying. I consider both of those to be less likely; he is to confrontational to back down from just the threat of impeachment of a house with an opposition majority; if anything being impeached by a partisan vote would be fodder for his conservative base.
1: https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/4319/Will-Donald-Tr...
The volume may be too low to do much arbitrage.
> PredictIt is a research project of Victoria University of Wellington. In order to take full advantage of the research opportunities presented by prediction markets like PredictIt, we make our data available to members of the academic community at no cost. PredictIt’s market data offers researchers a wealth of information that can be used to further our understanding of a wide array of subjects in fields of study as diverse as microeconomics, political behavior, computer science and game theory. PredictIt is excited to support the work of our researcher partners as they push the boundaries of human knowledge.
They have the votes to impeach him in the House come Thursday; at that point it becomes more of a political calculation of when the timing is right. They don't want to be seen as jumping the gun, so it probably depends on the Mueller report or the various other investigations into his taxes, past business crookedness, illegal campaign payments, his 'non-profit' foundation, the inauguration funds, or the various and sundry other high crimes and misdemeanors.
Worse is the declarations of some in the Democratic Party of going not only after him but Pence and even Kavanaugh. Go after both President and Vice would be played out as a coup and hand Trump his greatest leverage ever. It would push a lot of independents back into his camp. We do not need the precedent, let alone set by trying to impeach for activities before he was President.
If we start prosecuting politicians for what they did before they entered office then it just comes down to a banana republic. where whomever is in power decides who they don't like and just take them down.
No matter what, I would bet my money on continued discord and breakdown.
To me it seems pretty unlikely that there’s a bulletproof case to actually remove trump from office. In two years we basically have the same sentiments that trump was involved in illegal activity that we did back in 2016. I’d hope our government wasn’t so broken that it would take 3/4 of a term to get someone out. I remember a lot of the right saying the same with Obama getting impeached, while he enjoyed a full two terms.
At the end of the day the impeachment cries seem much more like wishful thinking on behalf of the party not in power than a realistic outcome.
This is misleading; the relevant metric for measuring development is GDP per capita, which is only around $8,500 in China, compared to $59,000 for the US and and $33,000 for the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...). The average person in China is much poorer than the average person in America or Europe; a significant portion are still subsistence farmers, the only reason absolute GDP is comparable with the US and Europe is that China's population is way bigger. One would only expect growth to slow when China's per-person GDP approaches that of a developed country, not it's total GDP.
It's not surprising that China is seeing some slowdown in growth, as they climb that curve. Jumping from $50 to $100 is easier than jumping from $5000 to $10,000. Or another way, a 10% growth rate at $1000 requires increasing revenue by $100. At $10,000, it means increasing by $1000.
On top of that, China is an export-driven economy, and it's tangling with slowdowns among its customers (who aren't growing nearly as fast anyway), and a trade war with the US.
edit: Rather than just measuring China vs "developed world", measure China vs China. The per capita GDP of China has increased a hundredfold in the past 50 years. To sustain that rate for another 50 years, per capita GDP would have to reach over $800,000 (in constant dollars). That seems... unlikely.
Adding few other points:
* China's new infrastructures are good and modern. (+)
* Education system is reasonable - produce large number of engineers, college educated young people. (+)
* Entrepreneurial spirits/activities are very high in a lot of cities. (+)
* The new roads system are mostly build/own with private money and adding non-trivial cost to the normal business when they need to transport goods. As compare to the highway system in the US. (-)
* The society is NOT govern by the rule of law. It is govern by the will of the Party and who ever is in power. As shown recently by the some famous actors, actress go fine massive amount because of tax issues. The new rules show up one day can cause the majority movie industry disappear in a few weeks. (-)
* The housing bubble is a big issue similar to what happen to Japan 20+ years ago. (-)
* The debt in private industries and local government are BIG issue. (-)
* The central government has recently created new much stricter rules about people (local/business ) taking the money out of China. It looks good on the surface for majority of population when present as rich people's issue. But imagine a bank allow for deposit but only allow for redraw of $100 per day. With that kind of policy, no business would trust a country enough to do new or continue investments.
* The old reformer (DengXiaoPeng)'s believe: It doesn't matter if it is a black cat or a white cat, if it can catch a mouse, it is a good cat.
* The new believe: Those black/write cats who turn into fat cats have served their purposes. It is harvest time.....
* Overall, it don't look good for China in near/long term.To be fair, she only got a fine and detention for a few months. US actor Wesley Snipes was jailed for 3 years for tax evasion.
Do you realize that if China ppp rises that the very factors that makes China such a growing force such as cheaper manufacturing will erode away?
The UK may be leaving the EU, but that's not a change to the Eurozone, which is a monetary union among a subset of EU members, of which the UK has never been a part.
I consider it a typo; the author clearly meant the EU, but wrote Eurozone for some reason. I can't entirely blame them; the many European treaties are a complicated mess.
Unfortunately as a citizen of one of the founding members of the EU, I don't even recognise half the flags in the diagram.
Give me the names and i'm sure i would know them, ask me to point them out on a blank map and we're straying back in to embarrassing territory again.
Off the top of my head Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Moldova, Turkey, Georgia, Northern Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Belarus, Romania and Bulgaria are all there anyway.
I think I've still missed a handful but I'm pretty happy with my European flag knowledge apparently from that.
Acknowledgement: I would like to thank the Eurovision Song Competition apparently for my education
There's probably an argument that one of the main drivers of European colonization was pursuit of a de facto increase in currency supply.
It is very early days, and it is quite complicated to build new products and businesses given that the tooling is poor, the crypto networks are slow, and many mainstream technologists take endless pleasure in shitting on crypto and cheering when prices fall, but progress continues.
I think cryptocurrencies and smart contracts have earned a seat at the table for disruptive technologies of the 21st century, along with cloud computing, AI / ML / big data, and smart phones.
Instead of starting with decentralization in your thinking and then trying to find value through that, start instead with de-institutionalization. The potential of crypto is not the individual currency but the network of currencies.
Our parents/grandparents invented the internet but didn't find ways to turn it into what it is today. Our generation invented the blockchain but it will be our kids who will end up turning it into valuable infrastructure. They will not be limited to understanding and applying it like we do but be able to think about it from a "born blockchain" perspective.
We keep trying to think how we can use it for things we already have solutions for which is of course not really going to do much. Instead we have to think about things that we don't have solutions for and which can't be done easily.
CryptoKitties is one of the best examples of how this can be used and if you think that is silly then you are right so are many other ideas that end up turning into amazing businesses.
So I say, let a million cryptocurrencies bloom it's the network itself that's the utility not the individual currency.
Repeating this over and over again doesn't make it true. Google, Amazon, and Ebay we're established in the first year of the eternal September, and immediately started changing people's lives. We're 10 years after Bitcoin, and still with nothing to show for it but money laundering and pump and dump schemes.
The blockchain is a protocol, not a company.
The TCP/IP protocol was decades old before it became useful to build companies on top of exactly because it required A LOT of networked connectivity, people to make various investments and critical mass from users.
Give it time.
We're currently sitting at around 8 networked devices for every human being, how many more do we need? 15? 20? What is holding blockchain back, since it is definitely not university membership?
I am saying that there aren't enough cryptocurrencies and thus the network is not pervasive enough to become infrastructure plus it's still mostly academic and you need to understand it conceptually to start making sense of it.
Most people don't even most of those who are involved in it.
Don’t get me wrong, the idea of decentralized anything is cool to me. I’d love for it to be an avenue for reclaiming sovereignty or privacy or whatever else. I just have yet to see it actually solve a new problem. And switching from the way things are to using blockchain “just cuz” isn’t really a step forward imho. It’s a step sideways, where now we have a different backend but in the end nothing has improved.
I’d be happy to hear novel solutions blockchain provides :)
I always think about the blockchain as TCP/IP with history. Plenty of value in that.
my other takeaway - Be greedy when others are fearful, fearful when others are greedy"
Of all the things said in the post this stands out to me as the only overly pessimistic point. First of all: The UK always had a very special relationship to and within EU. Now this relationship is going to be different - but not earth-shakingly different.
Yes, there is a lot of uncertainty right now, and I agree with Fred Wilson here that we can expect a messy Brexit, but I don't expect this state of affairs to drag on through the whole of 2019. At some point we will have clarity and this will hopefully be beneficial for the economy.
The most important point though is that a messy Brexit is expected on both sides of the Channel preparations for it are already proceeding.
Seriously?? The exit is so incredibly complex I can foresee the ramifications dragging into decades. The border problems alone are going to be a political quagmire, to view this sort of thing is a 12 month trifle is short-sighted to say the least.
The exit will split the country in half, how on earth can you have 'clarity' when there is basically zero bi-partisan agreement politically and socially?
Britain might start to kick out Europeans, but European countries are probably going to try and keep British retirees and professionals. A chunk of the financial industry is going to migrate out of London.
European products would get far more expensive, sure, but are British people going to actually dump them? I mean, if you're used to good Italian olive oil, French cheese and German cars, it might take a few years to switch to canola oil, American cheese and Geely-ies.
In reality, the markets would likely respond to a Pence presidency with positivity. His reputation is far more "boring and dependable" than Trump's ever has been.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/business/dealbook/what-ha...
Nothing of interest. Ctrl-W.
Also, this is a list of predictions. It is therefore predicting that there will be not much action on the climate in 2019. That seems... plausible.
So predictit at least disagrees that mueller finds collusion.
And as always if you are absolutely certain that mueller will find collusion, you can make some money. Put your money where your mouth is.
2019 and 2020 will see the country better learning to work around a President who acts on whims instead of information.
The Fed is far more likely to impact equity markets, but I think far too many (Wilson included) are too focused on the trend in rates without any consideration at all for the relative level of rates historically. It is true that a rising trend in rates is usually bearish for stocks, BUT it's very important to understand the trend in a broader context. Rates are still extremely low in a historical context and if the Fed pauses in 2019 and employment and consumer spending remain strong, stocks aren't likely to drop much more simply because 3% is not a satisfactory return for most people unless you are nearing retirement. So where else are you going to park your money? Probably stocks. Also, a company like Apple isn't going to be drastically effected by marginally higher rates when they were already close to zero. Sure, their cost of capital might go up by a quarter a percent. Is that really going to move the needle on their earnings significantly? Other companies that aren't profitable and heavily reliant on debt probably will be hurt, though.
Here's what I believe is happening: the Fed did a very poor job of communicating its position and intent in late 2018 (probably because they themselves didn't know what they were going to do) and spooked the markets by saying they were going to hike several times in 2019. They then walked this back but the markets are still a bit uneasy. Sentiment always follows price, and now that prices have fallen and volatility has spiked, what are the pundits doing? Predicting price declines and higher volatility! Well, that's already happened so if you are selling stocks now and paying up for VIX calls, you're probably late to the party. In early 2018, most pundits were saying to buy stocks.
I agree I wouldn't put money on Trump being removed, but neither would I be shocked if it happened. Things are more complicated than a whip count.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WnYi3T78Ag
Trump has been having business with the Russian mafia for decades.
One 2019 prediction I have is a resurgence of interest in VR with the release of Oculus Quest. A lot of people have been quietly building for 5 years waiting for this.
On politics I'll go out on a limb here and say that the FBI/DOJ will conclude a number of (under reported, multi-year) investigations and bring indictments for a large number of well-known politicians of both parties.
That said, I'm not at all convinced this will lead to impeachment, although it may lead to resignation. The House isn't going to impeach without a reasonable chance of success in the Senate, and I don't see twenty of McConnell's Republicans voting to destroy Trump, no matter what he did or what he's charged with doing.
One interesting thing about Trump is that he has some of the most stable (albeit somewhat low) approval ratings of any president that there's reliable data for. But he's gone from "historically unpopular" to "about as popular as Reagan, Ford or Clinton" at this point in his presidency.
I will only give weight-age to Mr.Wilson's prediction on this if he discloses whom he cast his Vote in 2016 and its not Hillary Clinton.
Also, if you have an annual tradition of forecasting the upcoming year, please also make it a tradition of evaluating your previous year's prediction.
Edit: Here are his predictions for 2018. Some he got right, but on lot of stuff he played it both ways and honestly expressed his lack of clarity.
My personal, political hope is that the democrats try to be productive with the republicans in Congress and the White House - but of course maximizing the results of their leverage on the process. Unfortunately, there’s not much room for optimism from how the republicans denied cooperation with the democrats during the last administration.
I personally don't mind gridlock that badly -- none of them have the best interests of the people in mind, so the less they're able to accomplish the better.
That basically amounts to saying that you don't believe a Clinton voter can be objective. That's evidence of bias on your part, not his.
I am biased and flawed, and I agree with your assessment.
Good point, I was curious too, and I found exactly that for 2016:
https://avc.com/2016/12/what-did-and-did-not-happen-in-2016/
Edit: Same for other years: https://avc.com/2018/12/what-happened-in-2018/ https://avc.com/2017/12/what-happened-in-2017/ https://avc.com/2015/12/what-didnt-happen/ http://avc.com/2014/12/what-just-happened/
The administration is a slow motion car crash.
But the Mueller investigation, so far, has uncovered: Trump's lawyer evading some taxes. With all that effort and such minor results it's not looking like they're going to find much.
No, it hasn't. There has been no report.