The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Dr. Paul Kedrosky provides his predictions for economics, politics, technology and terrorism for 2004 and beyond. Economics A surprisingly short recession will be followed by an equally short expansion: The explosive recovery out of recession that hit the U.S. in the middle of 2003 will surprisingly peter out in mid-2004. A second recession will begin shortly after the October presidential elections in the U.S. Before January of 2005, the Canadian dollar it will run all the way to $0.86 and then will begin sliding back down again to around $0.77. U.S.-style financial scandals will hit a major Canadian fund manager: See 'Fiscal' P.# Con't from P.# The global fund management industry is under extreme pressure, and there are people cutting corners and playing tricksy games-and they aren't just holding U.S. passports. And it will all become noisily obvious to Canadians in 2004. Politics George Bush will lose the next U.S. presidential election: Much to my dismay, George Bush will lose the October 2004 presidential election. But he won't lose it over Iraq, whatever many Canadians (and others) may think of his actions there. He will lose the 2004 election for the same reason his father lost the 1992 election: fiscal frustration. John Manley will begin his 2007 prime ministerial campaign: Only one has been smart enough to use Jean Chretien's departure as a cue for his exit: former finance minister John Manley. Next year it will be clear that his departure was an attempt to pull a Martin on Paul Martin, and thus the 2007 campaign will have begun. Science and technology A major telephone company will declare bankruptcy: The company formerly known as WorldCom (now known as MCI) will emerge from bankruptcy protection in early 2004. Connectivity becomes pass: Being constantly connected will become a scourge, like being tied to your desk in the smoke-filled factories of the 19th century. There will be unquiet rebellions all over, as people begin throwing off their (invisible) wireless shackles and declaring that their synch-ing feeling is now gone. Terrorism A terrorism-free 2004: Next year will be blissfully quiet on the domestic terrorism front. There will be no act of foreign terrorism on Canadian or U.S. soil, and the situation in Iraq will have settled down to the point that as many as 25 per cent of U.S. troops will be removed. The oil pipelines in Iraq, and most of the oil reservoirs in the country, will turn out to be in better shape than critics had thought. Osama bin Laden will be captured or killed: He has been the spook of spooks, a Kaiser Soze for terrorists everywhere. But all of that will come to an end in 2004. A concerted effort by Pakistani intelligence and the U.S. military will pay off by cornering Bin Laden in some squalid border village.
