look into the future

I check financial news pretty regularly, so lately it has been easy to get the impression that the mortgage world is coming to an end. Generally speaking, this does not impact Golden and me too much because we will not be buying or selling a house for a while, but we do need to retain some equity to eventually stop paying PMI on our mortgage. At this rate, I figure we'll be paying PMI until NJ is leaving for college.

What I do not understand is how this appears to have taken entire industries off guard. For years now I have been reading about the impending housing market implosion. Millions of people were getting mortgages that they could not afford, and this fact was no secret, so someone was going to have to pay the piper some day. It did not take a doctorate in economics to figure that out.

In fact, I don't know if BB remembers this, but when he was looking for work two years ago I encouraged him to avoid working with mortgages. I also personally turned down a job offer over four years ago with a mortgage title company in part because I knew the job would be in danger within a few years once the housing market headed south.

If predicting what is currently happening was so simple I would have hoped that businesses that relied on home lending would have accounted for this risk years ago. Most apparently did not, and the entire economy is now paying the price for this short-sightedness.

This all makes me wonder what other completely predictable surprises are around the corner. I know that an obvious issue that a lot of people are predicting is global warming. Since that is a popular one and can be controversial, I won't address it specifically. I will instead offer a myriad of serious and not-so-serious predictions of my own. In case you didn't figure this out, the serious predictions are the even-numbered ones.

1. There will be a scandal on Sesame Street when it is learned that Bert, Ernie, and the show's producers are receiving kickbacks from the letter J for making sure it gets more exposure on the show than any of the other letters.
2. Unless the new fuel regulations requiring a certain percentage of ethanol use that were recently passed are somehow modified, the price of food and gas will go up significantly in the next five years. The oil industry will take the fall for the price hikes.
3. Michael Jackson will be offered the leading role in the TV spinoff The Bionic Man since he already is one.
4. No matter who is nominated for president from either main political party, the biggest appeal of both candidates will be that they aren't the other major candidate.
5. To ward off complaints of corruption in the contract bidding process, new contracts to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq will be bid through eBay. The first eBay contract to install a water purification plant outside Mosul will be won by college sophomore in New Jersey who thinks he is bidding on a Brita water pitcher.
6. The founders of Google will learn to deeply regret using, "Don't be evil," as the company motto when Google accidentally discloses some of the personal information it keeps on users.
7. Nursing homes will save millions by replacing most of the care staff with the OnStar system.
8. The value of commercial real estate will plummet in about ten to twenty years when the affordable technology for telecommuting reaches the point that an employee can sit in a virtual office at home that makes the employee feel like he or she is actually in the office.
9. Angelina Jolie and Madonna will eventually adopt one in five children born into a third-world country.
10. Everything from pharmaceuticals to minor accounting services will be purchased and utilized via vending machines and kiosks, getting rid of more U.S. jobs than China and India combined could dream of taking.
11. OJ Simpson will find the real killer.
12. I will discover how wrong I really am.