Economy

Economic Outlook: Mark Anderson Predicts

2017: The Year of Major Inflections.

By Mark Anderson January 5, 2017

MarkAnderson

This article originally appeared in the January 2017 issue of Seattle magazine.

Weve been accurately predicting the future for more than 20 years, and so its interesting when, during that sweep of time, a single year stands out for any reason. All of our predictions regarding Chinas national business model, for example, have now been proven true, together with the often devastating effects experienced by trading partners, global corporations, citizens in inventing nations and victims of state-sponsored intellectual property theft.
Today, Strategic News Service is the only team to have predicted both the global financial collapse (2007) and the oil price collapse (2014), the two most important economic events of our lifetimes. Here is a list of some of the major inflection points we see driving change in 2017.
President Trump at work is more moderate than opponents fear, but capable of major surprises.
Theresa May brings the United Kingdom back from Chinas embrace.
Germany and the European Union join the United States to put the brakes on Chinas huge acquisition binge.
China, Russia and other human rights abusers work to censor the global internet.
Security concerns and nationalism balkanize the net.
Metropolitan West Coast real estate prices lose steam as the China collapse continues and the flow of the yuan from elites slows.
Seattles role as an international tech center continues to expand.
Amazon grows without apparent limit and Microsoft becomes a cool place to work.
Apple drops off the radar of Things That Matter.
Climate change continues to expand in importance and actions taken, regardless of Trump and the Koch brothers.
China achieves clear domination of Southeast Asia, both economically and militarily.
University tuition and health care costs, already the prime sources of bankruptcy in the United States, rise from the ridiculous to the unsustainable.
Medicine moves from the relative dark ages into precision, near-real-time monitoring of health states, with new discoveries almost daily.

MARK ANDERSON is founder and CEO of Strategic News Service, a San Juan Island-based source of advanced information at the intersection of technology and economics.

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