2011 SCORE CARD
With 2011 almost over, it is time for us to turn our attention to the long-standing tradition of scoring our prior year's predictions against what actually happened during the past year. Last year, we were down to 60% on 2010 predictions, as compared to 75% for 2009. So, let's see if we were able to get back to our winning ways.
Here were our predictions for 2011:
1. Sarah Palin will continue her meteoric rise in popularity among conservatives. She will also continue to attract huge crowds and followers, until she gets serious about running for president, at which time the Republican base will run to other more serious and qualified candidates.
TRUE: While Palin can still draw a massive crowd at a political rally, gets paid huge fees for giving a speech, and was recently rated the fourth most admired woman in the country, now that the Republican primary campaign season is in full swing, there is not a peep about her being a serious candidate and her approval/popularity rating among the general population has plummeted.
2. President Barack Obama's approval rating will slowly begin to improve after bottoming out in mid-2011. The media will support his return to popularity and major news outlets will run specials about the many achievements of the first three years of the Obama Administration.
2. President Barack Obama's approval rating will slowly begin to improve after bottoming out in mid-2011. The media will support his return to popularity and major news outlets will run specials about the many achievements of the first three years of the Obama Administration.
TRUE: The president's approval rating at the end of the year is about even with where it started, and it bottomed-out mid-year, as predicted.
3. Tech IPOs will make a major comeback with Facebook and other tech IPOs reaching Biblically huge proportions.
3. Tech IPOs will make a major comeback with Facebook and other tech IPOs reaching Biblically huge proportions.
TRUE: While Facebook didn't go out in 2011, and appears to be exploring a public offering in 2012, Groupon, Pandora, Zynga, and LinedIn, all major tech companies, created a feeding frenzy when they each filed S-1s and went public in 2011, signaling a renewed market appetite for tech IPOs for the first time in several years.
4. The unemployment rate, which has been hovering at around 10% for the past two years, will begin to go down.
4. The unemployment rate, which has been hovering at around 10% for the past two years, will begin to go down.
TRUE: Although there is some suspicion about how official unemployment numbers are calculated, the numbers published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate a reduced level of unemployment from December 2010 (9.4%) to December 2011 (8.6%).
5. The Stock Market will gain over 1,000 points, and experts will claim there was a major improvement in the economy.
5. The Stock Market will gain over 1,000 points, and experts will claim there was a major improvement in the economy.
TRUE: The Dow started the year a bit over 11,500, went up to around 12,800, and then settled in to close the year at 12,300. While Americans see the economy improving, many say they haven't experienced a personal improvement.
6. There will be a major troop reduction in Afghanistan.
6. There will be a major troop reduction in Afghanistan.
TRUE: The number of US troops in Afghanistan is down by at least 10,000 to about 90,000, as of a few days ago. As a side note, the final US troops also returned from Iraq on December 24, 2011.
7. Conversely, there will be a huge troop increase along the US/Mexico Border as Americans demand border security.
TRUE: As compared to this time last year, the number of troops along the US-Mexico border is substantially increased. And, apparently the increased numbers are working because arrests are down significantly and authorities are actually considering reducing the numbers again in 2012.
8. Secretary Hillary Clinton will become even more powerful and well-respected as she negotiates for America overseas. This will have the side-effect of causing pundits to acknowledge she should have been the Democratic candidate for president in 2008.
TRUE: Not only was Secretary Clinton selected as the most admired woman in American for an unprecedented 16th time, but she has been basically single handedly running US relations with foreign governments. In fact, admiration for her has grown so substantially, there have been several grass roots movements to either get her to run for president and challenge president Obama in a Democratic primary, or at the very least, to replace vice president Biden on the 2012 ticket.
9. There will be an increase in home-grown terror attempts, and a similar increase in the number of attempts foiled by the law enforcement community, as we approach the 10th Anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
FALSE: It could be this was a poorly chosen prediction because it is nearly impossible to verify. While we suspect we are right on this one, there is no publicly available information to substantiate the claim, so we will subtract a point from our score card for this one.
10. New airport screening machines that don't show body parts, require shoes to be removed, or liquids to be disposed, will be developed and deployed to quell the outrage over privacy violations in the current airport screening methodology.
FALSE: Looks like we were a bit ahead of the manufacturers on this one. There were some talks about machines of this nature in 2011, but so far, none have been deployed into production in any US airports. So, we lose a point here.
In summary, looks like we got 8 out of 10 this year. So, at least we redeemed ourselves from the not-so-great performance last time. Predictions for 2012 will be here soon. But, first, a quick historical recap, just for posterity.
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Historical Recap |
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2009 |
75% |
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2010 |
60% |
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2011 |
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2012 |
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There you have it, friends. Have a healthy and happy 2012 and always remember to develop your skill on par with your talent.
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