下面我要提出十项最新年度预期，对今后十年逐年进行展望。未来十年将是有产者和无产者展开经济战的十年，令美国从内部土崩瓦解的三种意识形态之间的斗争也绝无妥协余地。“贫富差距”、贪婪、权利和敌意都如此根深蒂固，根本不可能妥协。只有像1929年那样出现大灾大难，资本主义和民主制统统崩溃，经济坠入地狱，美国才不得不进行彻底改革。看看今后十年都会发生些什么吧：

         2011年：华尔街超级富豪统治华盛顿

          过去三十年，所谓的民主国家美国一直控制在保守派手中，从里根(Reagan)到奥巴马都是如此。在这种背景下，连“进步的”的联邦最高法院(Supreme Court)去年也做出一件让美国人神经崩溃的事。最高法院推翻了长期以来一致沿用的判例，让富有老板掌控下无生命的公司拥有与有生命的公民同等的权利。在笔者当年就读的弗吉尼亚大学(University of Virginia)的宪法课堂上，这项裁定会被判为不及格。

            2012年：超级富豪在政治体系中的绝对权力得到巩固

           联邦最高法院的荒谬裁决让政治贿赂成为合法行为。现在，数十亿美元经游说者之手进入政客的口袋里，目标只有一个，就是要确保每个政客都按超级富豪的意志来投票。谁有钱就是老大。美国不再是一个民主制国家，甚至连财阀制国家也算不上。如今，美国中产阶级正迅速沦为第三世界的穷人，而富人则越来越富，超级富豪与其他人之间的差距稳步扩大。现在看来，谁是2012年大选的赢家并不重要，因为金钱腐蚀了一切，在这个对说客和富有捐款人偏爱有加的体系中，奥巴马已经成了任人摆布的傀儡。

         2013年：五角大楼加紧发动全球商品战

         布什(Bush)总统当政期间，《财富》(Fortune)杂志曾对五角大楼一篇机密报告进行了分析，该报告预计“气候将迅速发生彻底变化，会成为所有国家安全问题的根源”。，“大规模干旱让耕地变为沙漠，森林化为灰烬”，数十亿新增人口为全球带来不安定因素。此外，“到2020年，肯定会发生某种极端事件……旧的模式可能会再次出现；战争将主宰人类生活”。不愿正视现实的政客们将选择战争，而非协作。

           2014年：全球人口激增，资源迅速枯竭

           美国“超级富豪阴谋”从中产阶级纳税人手中榨取了数千亿美元。超级富豪可不管全球每年剧增1亿人口要消耗多少稀缺的大宗商品，他们只是将其视为通过自由市场全球化致富的工具，而根本不考虑全球人口攀升到100亿会酿成怎样的悲剧。所有这一切都需要耗费更多地球上有限的、不可再生的资源。环保人士比尔•麦吉本(Bill McKibbenc)曾警告称，“再不行动起来就迟了。科学证实，地球已经开始遭到破坏。”。假如我们现在对环保人士的警告充耳不闻，未来会遭报应。人类无法拯救地球。

           2015年：“镀金时代”让美利坚“世界帝国”崩溃

           当年五角大楼预计2020年爆发第三次世界大战时，凯文•菲利普斯(Kevin Phillips)也曾在《财富与民主》(Wealth and Democracy)一书中警告称，“多数强国在经济实力达到顶峰时会变得不可一世，不惜以巨大的代价发动世界大战，结果耗费大量资源，背负巨额债务，最终玩火自焚。”《巨人：美利坚帝国的兴衰》(Colossus: The Rise and Fall of The American Empire)一书作者、金融史学家尼尔•弗格森(Niall Ferguson)也警告称，认为政治进程呈季节性和周期性是在自欺欺人。

           2016年：里根经济思想不攻自破；旧体系开始崩溃

           弗格森问道，“假如历史进程不是周期性、缓慢渐变的，而是不规律的呢？假如社会的衰亡无须经过很多世纪，而是突然发生，让人措手不及的呢”？”贾德•戴蒙(Jared Diamond)在《大崩溃》 (Collapse) 一书中警告称，“最让人不安的历史事实是，有那么多文明都曾呈现出急转直下的衰落势头。确实，一个社会可能在其人口、财富和实力达到顶点后就开始走向衰亡了。”但共和党新党首对历史教训却视而不见。

         2017年：中产阶级革命爆发，巴菲特所在的“富有阶层”失利

           革命的种子多年前就播下了。沃伦•巴菲特(Warren Buffett)预见未来将爆发革命，他说，“没错，会爆发阶级战争，但战争是我所在的富有阶级发起的，赢家也将是富人。”2016年总统大选之后，政治矛盾会引爆一场新的内战。收入“差距”让泡沫破裂，经济崩溃，政府再度出手救助“过于贪婪而不容倒闭”的银行，在全国激起民愤。新一轮萧条点燃了阶级反抗之火。

           2018年：美国联邦储备委员会(Fed)和华尔街垮台，哥拉斯－斯蒂格尔法案(Glass-Steagall)重新生效

           戴蒙说自己是“谨慎乐观派”。他认为，“在问题已经露出端倪，但还不算非常严重时，领导人应该有勇气从长远角度来考虑问题，作出果断、果敢和前瞻性的决定。”。而他们却磨磨蹭蹭，根本没有采取果断行动。本轮危机会引发文化革命。历史告诉我们，多数领袖的行为动机是眼前的个人利益，而非长远的公共利益。那些接受亿万富翁赞助的政客更是如此，个中原因看看他们的赞助人便知，除了财季业绩、年终奖和下次大选结果，这些家伙什么也不关心。

             2019年：全球商品战蔓延，数百万人丧生，数万亿美元付之一炬。

             超过半数的联邦预算投入了五角大楼的战争机器，美国财政和货币政策空间受到限制。在这种背景下，世界人口的加速增长以及稀缺资源的减少引燃了新的商品战争。人们不得不反思，在国内就业、教育、医疗、养老等项目迅速恶化之际，是否应该减少国防支出。

           2020年：美国首位女总统诞生，父权制时代结束。

         显而易见，父权制（从古至今男人主导世界文化、政治和经济）已经失败了，它把世界带到了毁灭的边缘。为什么男性统治者会失败呢？投资管理公司GMO（资产管理规模达1,080亿美元）的负责人杰瑞米•格兰瑟姆(Jeremy Grantham)曾预见到了2008年金融危机，现在又发出新的警告，称男性领导者的管理风格偏情绪化，“缺乏耐心……只关注本季度要做的事情或者年度预算”。他认为，“应该有更多具有历史眼光，考虑更周全、右脑更发达的人”来担任领导者”。然而，“我们现在的领袖是一群只考虑眼前的左脑发达者”，所以“每次发生无历史经验可循的小概率复杂事件时，他们必然处理不好”，2000年、2008年、2012年、2016年和2020年都如此。

           格兰瑟姆的研究显示，在即将到来的后资本主义美国时代，女性领导者将自然而然地脱颍而出。其中一项原因是，男性的大脑构造决定了他们是短视的破坏者。更重要的原因是，女性大脑的进化决定了她们天生就更擅长从长远角度考虑问题。脑科学研究者告诉我们，75%的男性属于短线左脑思考者，75%的女性显示出较强的右脑思考特征，能够进行前瞻性思考，她们更擅于考虑未来和宏观图景，能认识到未来的结果，她们是维护和平的人，而不是战争游戏玩家。

小结：以上十项预测绝非玩笑，所以请理性、稳健地投资，千万不要轻信男性金融家、男性政客和和男性超级富豪的夸夸其谈。

（本文作者Paul B. Farrell曾担任摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)的投资银行家，他着有“The Millionaire Code”、“The Winning Portfolio”等书。现为行为经济学专栏作家。）

A year-by-year look at a decade

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

Aug. 8, 2011，

So here’s an update of my 10 annual predictions, a year-by-year look at a decade of economic battles between the haves and have-nots, with no room for compromise between the three ideologies destroying our nation from within. The “wealth gap,” the greed, the entitlements, the hostilities are now so entrenched, compromise is impossible. Only a catastrophic 1929-style collapse of capitalism, democracy and a descent into economic hell will force America to restructure. Here’s how it will unfold in the coming 10 years:

2011: Wall Street’s super-rich control Washington

Thanks to the conservative takeover of America’s so-called democracy over the past three decades, from Reagan to Obama, our activist Supreme Court delivered the coup de grace into America’s psyche last year, overturning long-established precedent giving rich owners of zombie corporations the same rights as live citizens. That decision would have gotten a failing grade in my constitutional-law class back at the University of Virginia.

2012: Super-rich solidify absolute power over our political system

That bizarre Supreme Court decision legalized political bribery. Now, billions pass through lobbyists to politicians with one goal: a promise that every politician vote in line with their ideology. Wealth rules. America is no longer a democracy, not even a plutocracy. Today our middle class is in a rapid trickle down into Third World status, while the rich get richer and the “gap” between the super-rich and the rest steadily widens. It is now irrelevant who wins the 2012 race, because money corrupts and Obama is already a puppet of this system favoring lobbyists and wealthy donors.

2013: Pentagon’s global commodity wars accelerate

During the Bush presidency, Fortune analyzed a classified Pentagon report predicting “climate could change radically and fast. That would be the mother of all national-security issues.” Billions of new people spread unrest worldwide as “massive droughts turn farmland into dust bowls and forests to ashes.” Also, “by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening ... an old pattern could emerge; warfare defining human life.” Trapped in denial, political leaders will chose war over cooperation.

2014: Global population exploding, rapidly wasting resources

America’s “conspiracy of the super-rich” drains trillions from middle-class taxpayers. They see global population growth exploding by 100 million annually not as a drain on scarce commodities, but as tool to get richer through free-market globalization, ignoring the tragedies triggered as the population climbs to 10 billion, all demanding more of the world’s limited, nonrenewable resources, demanding payback for our failures to heed warnings of environmentalists like Bill McKibben: “It might be too late. The science is settled, the damage has already begun.” We can’t save the planet.

2015: ‘Gilded Age’ explodes America’s ‘Global Empire’

Around the time of the Pentagon’s prediction of WWIII in 2020, Kevin Phillips warned in “Wealth and Democracy”: “Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt and ultimately burning themselves out.” Similarly, financial historian Niall Ferguson, author of “Colossus: The Rise and Fall of The American Empire,” warned that we deceive ourselves, thinking “about the political process in seasonal, cyclical terms.”

2016: Reaganomics self-destructs; crashes come

“But what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arrhythmic?” asks Ferguson. “What if collapse does not arrive over a number of centuries but comes suddenly,” too rapid to respond in time? The new GOP president ignores the lessons of history, like Jared Diamond’s warnings in “Collapse”: “One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak in population, wealth and power.”

2017. Middle-class revolution: Buffett’s ‘rich class’ loses

The seeds were planted years ago. Warren Buffett saw the revolution coming: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” After the 2016 presidential election, political rage explodes into a new civil war. The income “gap” pops a bubble, there’s economic collapse and riots spread against another bailout of our “too-greedy-to-fail” banks. New depression ignites class rebellion.

2018. The Fed and Wall Street collapse, Glass-Steagall reinstated

Diamond says he’s a “cautious optimist:” Leaders need “the courage to practice long-term thinking, make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they reach crisis proportions.” They delay, fail to act boldly. This crisis triggers a cultural revolution. History tells us most leaders act by short-term self-interest, not long-term public interests, especially politicians funded by billionaires who can’t see past quarterly earnings, year-end bonuses, the next election.

2019: Global commodity wars spread, killing millions, wasting trillions

More than half our federal budget goes to the Pentagon’s war machine, limiting America’s fiscal and monetary policies. In this context, new commodity wars are ignited by an accelerating global population against a decline in the world’s scarce resources. That also forces a total rethinking of the balance between spending to protect against external enemies and a rapid deterioration of domestic programs: employment, education, health care, retirement.

2020. America’s first woman president, patriarchal dominance ends

It is clear that patriarchy — male dominance of world culture, politics and economics throughout history — has failed, bringing the world to the brink of total destruction. Why do male leaders fail? Jeremy Grantham’s firm GMO manages $108 billion. He predicted the 2008 meltdown and now warns: Male leaders are emotional, “impatient ... management types who focus on what they are doing this quarter or this annual budget.” Leadership “requires more people with a historical perspective who are more thoughtful and more right-brained.” Yet “we end up with an army of left-brained immediate doers,” which guarantees that “every time we get an outlying, obscure event that has never happened before in history, they are always to miss it,” as in 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and in 2020.

In the coming post-capitalism America, Grantham’s research suggests that women leaders will naturally emerge not just because the male brain is a short-term saboteur. The bigger reason is that women’s brains have evolved naturally as superior long-term thinkers. Brain researchers tell us 75% of men are short-term left-brain thinkers, while 75% of women tend to have strong right-brain traits as forward-thinkers, more aware of the future, the big picture, with a sense of future consequences, peacemakers rather than gamer-players.

Bottom line: These 10 predictions deserve serious consideration, so invest wisely, defensively and never listen to the happy talk from males across Wall Street, Washington or from the super-rich.