A Few Minutes with the Mayor – February 2016

Last month, a friend complained to me about reading newspaper headlines declaring what a bad year 2016 will be. Her reaction was to avoid reading these columns all together… and who could blame her? We seem to get enough bad news without some writer trying to tell us that more is coming. Gloom and doom sells and media pundits know it. Having acknowledged that, here are a few of my own predictions.

First, everyone knows this is an election year. At least they ought to know with every television newscaster talking about nothing else. So here is my first prediction. On November 8th the public will vote for the next President of the United States. On November 9th, regardless of who wins, the losing candidate’s supporters will declare that the country is doomed.

Monex, and other firms like it, will still be touting gold and silver as the best and safest form of investment. What they won’t mention is that gold started in 1979 around $230 an ounce, finished the year at $625 and hit a then, all-time high of $850 in 1980. Today the price is only 25% higher. The price of silver traded between $20 and $25 per ounce in December, 1979. Today silver averages $14.00 per ounce. You would have been better off investing in eggs which have doubled in price!

Gasoline is now cheaper to buy than water. This will continue as long as the Sunni Saudi Arabians and the Shiite Iranians continue to hate each other, and as long as fracking is legal in Pennsylvania.

Fracking will remain legal in Pennsylvania because farmers will continue to prefer clipping their dividend coupons from the oil producers instead of raising dairy cows.

The age of driverless cars is dawning. Google’s new model with no steering wheel and no pedals is well along in development. Seniors, even those without a license, will be able to sit in their car, instruct it where to go, and then take a nap while driving. This, in-turn, will necessitate a change in policing the roads. Officers will first have to tell the driver to wake up before saying “pull over.”

The 2 Dollar bill will make a comeback. In earlier times it was called a deuce. A deuce was also another term for the devil causing some to shun the bill thinking it unlucky. It was also associated with ladies of the night whose fee was two dollars. Since the devil has become more popular in American culture, and since two dollars couldn’t buy a kiss at a charity bazaar much less a tryst with a woman on a street corner, the 2 Dollar bill will simply be another form of currency. This will serve as some value to the Dollar Store chain which can double its sales by converting to a Two Dollar Store.

The science of ocular photography has developed the ability to photograph inside the eye by combining the camera with a microscope. One of Apple’s research programs is to reduce the required equipment to the size of an iPhone which already has built-in digital camera capabilities. Using software with advanced algorithms, Apple is hoping to advance this technology to an even higher level where it will be possible to determine whether someone is telling the truth simply by pointing their iPhone at them. Collecting internal data from the eye, then processing that information and matching it against similar data from known prevaricators, will enable one to know if the other person is lying.

I predict that when Apple announces this new iPhone, at least half of our Congress will either resign or retire.

And that Dear Reader is the limit to my ability as a prognosticator for this coming year. Wasn’t that better than the gloom and doom in the media?