World War III

[lazarus]

So... I was at my regular practice with a local pipe band... And afterwords we went for drinks as usual.. There is lot of talk going around right now... the topic says it all.. what do you guys think the outcome of the next 6 months to a year will be?

[exe]

The only one who could afford to make a world war 3 now would be China. Where would the money come from? If anyone else printed money the amount that would be needed would create hyperinflation.

But even then China has its own internal problems, the housing bobble.

[Ziu Echoes]

I'm of the opinion that not a whole lot actually going to happen in the next six months to a year.

I Do not think China or Russia are  planning on starting World War III it's not really financially in their best interest not to mention that they both have internal problems they're having to deal with. And I feel Russia is fairly satisfied with "gaining control" over the Crimean which is strategic for them because it contains all the Black Sea naval bases.

I do feel however there is a handful predictions which probably be accurately made.

US economy (And most Western countries) will continue to stay in this odd lingering state of uneasiness and a weak recession.

What I mean by this is no one super thrilled about the economy and economic prospects at least on an average person level. Fuel prices remain relatively high and food prices seem to be going steadily up both of which are not adequately accounted for in inflation statistics.  Add to this the amount of people that are still unemployed both statistically by receiving benefits(unemployment) and those that are no longer counted because they either quit looking for work/ their benefits have run out.  Add to this in most areas of the country there's not a whole lot of jobs opening up and when they are they're usually lower paying minimum wage part-time jobs.

Then on top of all of this there is the weak recession. What I mean by this is that the standard definition of a recession is six months in a row with negative GDP in the recession continues as long as the GDP remains negative. What this means is that as soon as you hit something like positive 0.1 % GDP growth in the recession has ended. This is all fine and dandy except for the fact that most economists will give you the number of 3% GDP growth is needed to keep the economy growing(US) and to accommodate all the new members of the population entering the workforce among other things at this 3% growth is needed for an aspects of maintaining its stable economy.  I started to refer to what's going on me now as a weak recession. we (USA) have had positive GDP growth for many months now however that GDP growth has not reached or exceeded it 3% with this means that a very basic level that every month more people are looking to enter the workforce than there are spots available. there is growth just not enough. Of course these individuals are not counted among the unemployed because they're not receiving unemployment. On top of this they've been changing the formula in the US of how exactly they calculate GDP and they still haven't been able to force it up high enough to convince everyone that the economy is fine and growing adequately.  One of two things are going to happen with this either they're going to be able to tell a lie long enough for the economy actually does start meaningfully getting better or it's going to slip back into recession and everyone's going to end up kind of having a minor freak out and both of the political parties are going to blame each other for causing it.

As far as US politics go I'm going to make the prediction that in the November election the House of Representatives will stay firmly in the control of the Republican Party plus or minus a few seats. And that the Senate will go from being controlled by the Democratic Party to being controlled by the Republican Party probably by a narrow margin probably no more than one to two seats. This probably means beyond this is that a lot of the presidents more radical agenda items coming to light very often. Except for when he tries to use executive orders to supersede the power of Congress. However I would not expect any major repeals of the Obama was administration's pet laws such as Obama care since there is just not going to be an adequate number of votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto.

There is however a couple things I think that could end up being very bad to fairly cataclysmic events if all the stars were too aligned rightly or wrongly depending on how you look at it.

One of my big worries is the problems right now in Israel/Syria/Iraq any one of these problems or some combination and/or convergence of them cause some serious problems. Just imagine for instance something happens it doesn't really matter what and this causes OPEC to either quit selling oil or severely cut back sales and production similar to what happened in the 70s this would cause a fuel price spike as well as potential shortages which would cause economic instability and misery throughout the globe. I mean just imagine what would happen if suddenly next month the price of fuel doubled throughout the country and stations started putting limits on the amount they would let to purchase something like you could only buy 10 to 15 gallons at a time and that stations with some what regularity would start running dry and just be out of fuel for days at a time. Just imagine the havoc that would cause.  This is just one possible negative outcome that I can envision happening between the mess that's happening right now in those three countries.

There is also the problem of pandemic. which are in all seriousness I think that some people are blowing a little out of proportion as far as actual likelihood of happen. I can see three current big threats that you could kind of lump in under this category

One the SARS like virus, Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) mutating and becoming more communicable while maintaining its current level of lethality/incapacitation.

I also believe that the Ebola outbreaks they've been having recently in Africa could be a potential pandemic threat to do this it would probably have to become more communicable and typically when something this deadly becomes more communicable its lethality typically drops thankfully. However if that was the case to happen. could imagine if death toll dropped to 10 to 20% but it became as communicable as the flu for instance. It would overwhelm most medical infrastructure in the world.

Third thing under pandemic that I would be worried about is with the onset of winter coming in a few months a new highly contagious and higher than average lethality flu virus coming on the world scene it wouldn't really matter where it came from as long as it really meat those criteria. But if I had to guess the best candidate currently for something like this would be the Asian bird flu.

However that being said about pandemics I do think it is highly more likely that if there is a major problem affecting the daily flow of life and more likely to come out of the Middle East political turmoil than it is to come out of a virus.

[exe]

Well to be honest with all the wars the western world (USA+Europe) has been engaged in in Iraq and elsewhere, i hope that ISIS will get control of the oil in Iraq. I mean really. We deserve this to happen. Of course if ISIS would try to spread their ideology beyond this region that ofcourse will have to be stopped.

And by the looks of it, it seems like the population of Iraq is more satisfied at being ruled by theocrats than by democrats, and those few Iraqi individuals who would disagree with that can come to Europe and live here.

[Ziu Echoes]

I have to mostly agree with you exe I generally don't think we (US+ Europe) should be messing around in the affairs of other nations. It does appear that ISIS is the most likely candidate to bring "stability" to Iraq and Syria. I really hope that someone much more "moderate" wins out. but really that my hope.

However my predictions haven't been super awesome lately it pretty much said in the last post that I figured the Ukrainian Russian things more or less over and then Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 most likely got shot down by somebody.

And the Ebola seems to be spreading beyond its containment zone this was one of the first news articles I read this morning http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/7/26/ebola-nigeria-health.html

and then shortly after that I stumbled across this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2707873/Yet-American-citizen-catches-Ebola-deaths-dreaded-infections-worst-outbreak-EVER-near-700-four-countries.html I mean they were a persons in the hot Zone so it's not completely unfathomable that they contracted the disease. But still either one of these articles exactly gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

[Tych0]

Alot of you guys seem to think WWIII will be started by nations who have lots of money to fund a war. I think WWIII will be started for the completely opposite reason. Hitler rose to power and WWII was started because the German economy was in shambles.