BitCoin will go bust.

When people invest in something without fully understanding why it has value, that causes bubbles to happen. They see it go up in price and decide that they want in on it no matter what it is: tulip bulbs, tech stocks, Beanie Babies, etc. But if expectation of an increase in value is the only reason why people are buying an asset, there will come a point where the price reaches it′s peak and some speculators sell to take a profit. Then a lot of investors sell to cut their losses.

Right now, people are taking out mortgages and using credit cards to buy Bitcoin. It′s foolish to invest with money that you don′t have. This can have a huge and unfortunate ripple effect. When Bitcoin goes down in value, people will have all that debt with nothing to show for it. Watch for banks to use all those bad loans as a pretext for asking for another bailout. This is the kind of stupidity that causes recessions. Banks should not grant loans to morons.

If you own Bitcoin right now, sell it. Remember the mantra of ″Buy low, sell high.″ Gold is doing poorly low right now, so consider buying that. The worst time to buy gold is when you see TV ads encouraging you to buy it. Don′t buy it when everyone else is buying it. Buy it when everyone is selling it.

EDIT: I was asked what date this would happen by. I'm going with June 30th, 2018.

My predictions on the Obama Administration

Mike Sylvester made his predictions for the first 2 years of the Obama Administration.

Personally, I think predictions are fluff. But they're fun, so here are my predictions for his first term:

1. The Cuba embargo will end. Other trade policies will depend on who he has for SecState and SecTres.

2. Obama will not grant amnesty to undocumented workers. If he wouldn’t do it for his aunt, he’s not going to do it for anyone else.

3. Carbon cap and trade won’t happen, because it won’t matter. China and India are growing economically, and this will add millions of cars to the world’s roads. Worldwide CO2 output will not go down, no matter what the US does.

4. Obama will have all but a few US troops out of Iraq by the end of his first term. The few that are left will be US Marines assigned to the embassy. There may even be a pullout from Afghanistan, depending on how the talks with the Taliban go.

5. The stock market will be above 10,000 points by the end of 2009. Uncertainty is what is hurting stock prices. That uncertainty will go away once investors get used to Obama.

Unless otherwise noted, I'm setting January 20, 2013 as the target date for these predictions. I'll see how many I got right at the end of BHO's first term.