A lot of people have emailed me lately asking me what I expect to have happen, so that they can make plans.  This is not something I'm totally wild about - I'd personally rather you base this on your own analysis.  I have been doing fairly well at the prediction game so far - I predicted a deflationary depression with rising food prices just about a year ago and my annual New Year's predictions are now officially 8 for 10, but I also would have predicted oil prices to remain fairly high for a while into the recession, and I've long said that I though the fundamentals of the economy were so bizarre and unstable that I didn't understand why it hadn't crashed already.  That is, I do not think that every word that comes out of my mouth was put there by a divine being, and neither should you.  I'm wrong sometimes, and you should remember that.  But because so many people are asking me to give them a sense of what we're facing, I'm going to do that, if you promise not to make any life decisions solely based upon my thinking.

 So here are my bets for what we're facing the coming decade in re: food, energy, etc...

 - That in retrospect, the current economic shifts will last at least 7 years, and probably a decade or more before stabilizing, almost certainly at a new, lower economic and energy level. ...

- Markets will still exist after this.  This seems obvious, but  I've had people ask if there will still be a stock market after this.  The answer is yes, certainly. ...

-  This one is more an intuition than a fully formed and reasoned thought, but I'm coming to suspect that we may find ourselves unable to import some, or many goods at some point in the not-too-distant future. ...  

- I'd expect to lose your job. ...

- I may be wrong here, but I don't expect most people to lose their homes, nationally. I think millions will, but the enormous build out of homes has left us with more housing than we can possibly use in any rational system. ...

- I think that most people's kids aren't going to college for a while. ...

- I don't expect short term loss of utilities or food, but I do expect a lot of people to struggle to pay for them. ...

- I have said this before, but I expect that generations are going to have to come to terms with one another really soon. ...

- I expect that in the coming years there will be a lot of misery and unhappiness.  And also a lot of surprising moments of happiness. ...