Blasingame’s 2015 Crystal Ball Predictions
Here are my predictions for 2015. My 14-year record is 73% accuracy.
Prediction: Geopolitics, geo-competition and the supply/demand dynamic for crude oil won’t find equilibrium anytime soon, causing prices to fluctuate, but average less than $70 per barrel.
Prediction: Buoyed by consumers buoyed by low gas prices and six years of recovery fatigue, the U.S. economy will grow, but global economic headwinds and currency influences on exports will result in U.S. annual GDP averaging near an unremarkable 3%.
Prediction: Consumer optimism will produce small business contribution to GDP greater than any year since the Great Recession.
Prediction: An improving economy, plus anticipation of a business-friendly 114th Congress will cause an upward trend in small business optimism toward NFIB Index’s 42-year average of 100 points.
Prediction: Small business loan demand will increase as growth opportunities exceed the ability to fund them with organic capital resources.
Prediction: With organizational productivity maxed out, even marginal economic growth will cause small and large businesses to increase hiring.
Prediction: Continued concern about the fragility of the U.S. and global economies will cause the Fed to maintain monetary easing by keeping the Fed Funds rate unchanged.
Prediction: In June the Supreme Court will deliver a catastrophic structural blow to Obamacare in a 5-4 ruling that the law does not permit subsidies to enrollees in the 36 states with Federal exchanges.
Prediction: The GOP-controlled Congress and President Obama will accomplish one thing together in 2015: tax reform.
Prediction: Congressional Republicans will successfully thwart the execution of Obama’s executive order on immigration.
Prediction: The Sony hack and subsequent corporate cyber-terror threat by North Korea will for the first time in history manifest in cyber-security practices of corporate America being elevated to de facto national security concerns.
Prediction: The unprecedented terror threat on a U.S. corporation by a foreign state in Dec 2014 will cause the U.S. government to constrain private firms from responding to such threats on their own.
Prediction: In political theater redux, a Clinton and a Bush will become presidential candidates in the next cycle, but neither will be their party’s front-runners by year-end.
Prediction: Oregon will defeat Florida State in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.
Prediction: Alabama will win the inaugural NCAA Division I Championship Game Jan10.
Write this on a rock ... Obamacare will continue to make news in 2015, as will oil, cyber-security and a mixed bag of global economic conditions.
