Ecco alcune previsioni per i 5-6 prossimi anni di Robert Prechter, famoso esperto delle onde di Elliott e creatore del sito ElliottWave International :
Markets :
- Stock markets around the world will continue to fall. Ultimately, the averages will drop more than 90%.
- Real estate values will fall more than they did in the 1930s and 1940s.
- Despite attempted manipulation by OPEC or any other nations, the world price of oil will decline. (An exception may occur if production facilities are destroyed or shipping halted during wartime.)
- Rating services will resume the trend of downgrading bond quality. Eventually, states, counties, cities, corporations and even nations will default on bonds in record amounts.
- Debt packages made of mortgage-backed bonds, auto loans and credit card debt will become viewed as unworthy investments.
- Prices for collectibles will continue to fall. Many will become little more than curios.
- The price/earnings ratio for the S&P will hit single digits (probably falling below 6), while the annual dividend yield on the Dow and S&P will rise into double digits (probably rising above 17 percent).
- Market timing will come to be viewed as the best approach to investing in stocks, although investing in stocks in the first place will be considered foolhardy. “Buy and hold” will be denounced as a flawed and foolish approach to the stock market.
- The demographic argument for a continued boom fueled by baby boomer spending and retirement savings will be transformed (somewhere near the bottom of the decline) into an argument that the same portion of the population will be responsible for a continued bust.
- After a period of exclusively derisive and negative popular allusions to the stock market, references to stocks in non-financial settings will become all but non-existent.
- Bearish speculators will make a lot of money, and safety-minded investors will see their purchasing power rise.
Finance :
- Many, if not most, pension plans will fall in value and be unable to provide the promised benefits. Anger over this development will result in demonstrations, violence and tardy and ineffective political reform.
- More banks will fail than failed in the 1930s.
- The total amount of credit outstanding worldwide will decline substantially.
- The Federal Reserve chairman will be labeled a fool who is greatly responsible for the collapse.
- The Federal Reserve System will be discredited and then abolished.
- The dollar will lose its place as the world’s reserve currency. Either gold, a currency backed by gold (such as the Islamic dinar), or the Chinese yuan will take its place.
- “The rich” will be vilified, and their property will be increasingly taxed and seized.
- Regulatory and legislative reforms will limit, curtail or ban a number of structures facilitating speculation, such as options, futures, margin lending, hedge funds, mutual funds, IRAs and 401Ks.
- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will shut down.
- Financial news networks will change formats or go off the air
- The “debt forgiveness” movement in the third world will eventually move to developed countries and see many of its goals realized.
- Many of the governments and corporate entities that have been bailed out by the U.S. government and the IMF over the course of the last 34 years will fail again, along with new ones. The IMF, World Bank, the Fed and other financing entities will not bail them out.
- The IMF, World Bank and the United Nations will be shut down.
- Existing high-yield “junk” bonds will fall to zero, and new ones will no longer be issued.
- Countless difficulties attending the above events will occur.
Economy :
- The trend toward economic contraction that began in 2001 will continue to develop into a depression.
- The unemployment rate in the U.S. and in most countries around the world will rise and eventually exceed 25 percent.
- A record number of manufacturing companies in the U.S. will fail.
Countries will adopt numerous trade restrictions, import taxes and other protectionist measures. - Consumer confidence will fall to record low levels.
- The number of new skyscrapers will decline dramatically.
Affordable housing will become difficult to come by. Family members will move in with each other. Homelessness will increase. - China will have a severe economic setback along with the rest of the world, but it will be a “wave 2,” from which the country will emerge as the economic leader of the world.