- Wake-Up Call: Top 11 Trends of 2011
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- After the tumultuous years of the Great Recession, a
battered people may wish that 2011 will bring a return to kinder, gentler
times.
- But that is not what we are predicting. Instead, the
fruits of government and institutional action and inaction
on many fronts will ripen in unplanned-for fashions. Trends we have previously
identified, and that have been brewing for some time, will reach maturity
in 2011, impacting just about everyone in the world.
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- 1. Wake-Up Call In 2011, the people of all nations
will fully recognize how grave economic conditions have become, how ineffectual
and self-serving the so-called solutions have been, and how dire the consequences
will be.
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- Having become convinced of the inability of leaders and
know-it-all "arbiters of everything" to fulfill their promises,
the people will do more than just question authority, they will defy authority.
The seeds of revolution will be sown.
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- 2. Crack-Up 2011 Among our Top Trends for last year
was the "Crash of 2010." What happened? The stock market didn't
crash. We know.
- We made it clear in our Autumn Trends Journal that we
were not forecasting a stock market crash the equity markets were
no longer a legitimate indicator of recovery or the real state of the economy.
Yet the reliable indicators (employment numbers,
the real estate market, currency pressures, sovereign debt problems) all
bordered between crisis and disaster.
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- In 2011, with the arsenal of schemes to prop them up
depleted, we predict "Crack-Up 2011": teetering economies will
collapse, currency wars will ensue, trade barriers will be erected, economic
unions will splinter, and the onset of the "Greatest Depression"
will be recognized by everyone.
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- 3. Screw the People As times get even tougher and people
get even poorer, the "authorities" will intensify their efforts
to extract the funds needed to meet fiscal obligations. While there will
be variations on the theme, the governments' song will be the same: cut
what you give, raise what you take.
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- 4. Crime Waves No job + no money + compounding debt
= high stress, strained relations, short fuses. In
2011, with the fuse lit, it will be prime time for Crime Time. As Gerald
Celente says, "When people lose everything and they have nothing left
to lose, they lose it."
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- Hardship-driven crimes will be committed across the socioeconomic
spectrum by legions of the on-the-edge desperate who will do whatever they
must to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.
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- 5. Crackdown on Liberty As crime rates rise, so will
the voices demanding a crackdown. A national crusade to "Get Tough
on Crime" will be waged against the citizenry. And just as in the
"War on Terror," where "suspected terrorists" are killed
before proven guilty or jailed without trial, in the "War on Crime"
everyone is a suspect until proven innocent.
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- 6. Alternative Energy In laboratories and workshops
unnoticed by mainstream analysts, scientific visionaries and entrepreneurs
are forging a new physics incorporating principles once thought impossible,
working to create devices that liberate more energy than they consume.
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- What are they, and how long will it be before they can
be brought to market? Shrewd investors will ignore the "can't be
done" skepticism, and examine the newly emerging energy trend opportunities
that will come of age in 2011.
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- 7. Journalism 2.0 Though the trend has been in the
making since the dawn of the Internet Revolution, 2011 will mark the year
that new methods of news and information distribution will render the 20th
century model obsolete.
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- With its unparalleled reach across borders and language
barriers, "Journalism 2.0" has the potential to influence and
educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would
never permit. Of the hundreds of trends we have forecast over three decades,
few have the possibility of such far-reaching
effects.
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- 8. Cyberwars Just a decade ago, when the digital age
was blooming and hackers were looked upon as annoying geeks, we forecast
that the intrinsic fragility of the Internet and the vulnerability of the
data it carried made it ripe for cyber-crime and cyber-warfare to flourish.
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- In 2010, every major government acknowledged that Cyberwar
was a clear and present danger and, in fact, had already begun. The demonstrable
effects of Cyberwar and its companion, Cybercrime, are already significant
and will come of age in 2011. Equally disruptive will be the harsh
measures taken by global governments to control free access to the web,
identify its users, and literally shut down computers that it considers
a threat to national security.
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- 9. Youth of the World Unite University degrees in hand
yet out of work, in debt and with no prospects on the horizon, feeling
betrayed and angry, forced to live back at home, young adults and 20-somethings
are mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. Filled with
vigor, rife with passion, but not mature enough to control their impulses,
the confrontations they engage in will often escalate disproportionately.
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- Government efforts to exert control and return the youth
to quiet complacency will be ham-fisted and ineffectual. The Revolution
will be televised blogged, YouTubed, Twittered and.
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- 10. End of The World! The closer we get to 2012, the
louder the calls will be that the "End is Near!" There have
always been sects, at any time in history, that saw signs and portents
proving the end of the world was imminent. But 2012 seems to hold a special
meaning across a wide segment of "End-time" believers.
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- Among the Armageddonites, the actual end of the world
and annihilation of the Earth in 2012 is a matter of certainty. Even the
rational and informed that carefully follow the news of never-ending global
crises, may sometimes feel the world is in a perilous
state. Both streams of thought are leading many to reevaluate their chances
for personal survival, be it in heaven or on earth.
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- 11. The Mystery Trend ... will be revealed upon publication
of the Trends Journal in mid-January.
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- With a 30-year track record to prove it, no one has a
more accurate inside scoop on the crucial trends shaping our future than
Trends Journal Publisher, Gerald Celente. To schedule an interview with
Mr. Celente to discuss these trends before they hit the headlines, contact:
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- Zeke West
- Media Relations
- zwest@trendsresearch
- 845 331.3500 Ext. 1
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- ©MMX The Trends Research Institute®
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