My Predictions for 2023

Some of them wishful… not all.

We can all offer our predictions, no need to leave it to Time Magazine and CNN. What fun, to read these in a year and measure our Nostradamus qualities. Some of these may reveal my politically homeless state, or my perennial optimism, which has gotten me into some trouble on the road to here.

Putin will die and Russia will be defeated. Vladimir Putin is trying to conceal his pancreatic cancer diagnosis, but any amateur journalist doing a Google search can quickly discover multiple non-conspiring sources confirming this story. He also has Parkinson’s disease, foreboding a slower path to the same fate. Putin is desperate to avoid defeat in his failed gamble to invade and annex Ukraine. His panic is overpowering his otherwise brilliant chess player strategic brain, and he is making rash, irrational decisions. Russia’s economy is suffering — although not as badly as reported in western press — and the elites are fleeing or bunkering, no longer loyal to the emperor who gave them their oligarchy. Russia’s back will break during 2023 and Putin will no longer be well enough to maintain credibility and loyalty of his lieutenants. He will live just long enough to see Russia collapse and seek to find a path from the rubble under a new leader, not one handpicked by Putin.

The US will avoid a recession. While China and the EU will slide into mild recession, America will experience only a shallow dip in consumer spending, house prices and new hires in the job market. An extension of the current conditions, but not a worsening. The employment numbers will hold reasonably firm, and interest rates will peak at their current levels, keeping mortgage rates from breaching 7% for most of us. This prediction is driven by the US dollar’s current strength, together with the shift in the military balance of power as America prepares to counter China’s offensive plans around Taiwan and South China Sea. Additionally, the global supply chain will organically build new avenues to get raw materials and components to factories to replace those broken by China’s internal problems. America’s fundamentals are healthy enough to keep this adjustment ‘shallow’ and to avoid wide scale unemployment and a collapse of housing prices.

China will see an end to its two-decade growth sprint. It will not collapse, but…