While much of the mainstream media labors away to put a cheery face on business-as-usual policies in the belief that a financial panic and a political upheaval can be averted by mesmerizing the public with fact-free news about Brittany's underwear, it appears as if 2007 has turned out to produce some very interesting benchmarks. Given that all leading presidential candidates are proposing a continuation of current policies (except Ron Paul), we can expect these precedents to be a very strong indicator of what we have in store for us in 2008.

We have seen some notable events in the following areas:

• Number of business failures and businesses filing for bankruptcy protection caused by passing the tipping point in taxes, regulation, and managed trade policies like NAFTA, along with the ripple effect from the domestic 3 auto manufacturers abandoning their domestic supplier base.

• Amount of consumables, automobiles including parts, and manufactured goods imported from abroad, much of it financed on credit card debt and people borrowing against the disappearing equity in their homes.

• Number of personal bankruptcies, helped along by job losses resulting from capital flight as businesses dump employees and take their assets out of reach of the long arm of the United States government.

• Number of home foreclosures.

• Amount of bad paper sold by the banking industry all over the world as fraudulently packaged mortgage deals.

• Loss in the value of the dollar relative to other currencies.

• Loss in the value of the dollar relative to gold, silver, and oil.

• Number and frequency of panic moves by the Federal Reserve, lowering interest rates to save the banks, even as the dollar plummets.

• Amount of money created out of thin air by Federal Reserve policy, approaching hyperinflation levels.

• Unprecedented energy prices, helped along by deliberate provocation to destabilize the middle east.

• Disruption of the food economy with ethanol subsidies, which combined with record energy costs is creating a large and growing spike in food prices across the board.

• Amount of understatement of inflation by not counting food, housing, and energy costs in the CPI, which would show inflation roaring along at 10-15% using previous measures.

• Loss in the value of the stock markets as measured against gold or silver.

• Decrease in the number of people working in farming and manufacturing vs people in the 'service economy' and people who get paid out of tax dollars.

• Amount of government debt, spending all out of proportion to the ability to tax the people. The debt is increasing at 1.36 billion dollars per day. Right now your share is $30,000, and your interest payment is $250 per month. Same for your spouse and each of your children.

• Percentage of government revenues paid to interest on the debt.

• Dollar costs of pre-emptive war and policing the world.

• Number of our servicemens' lives lost promoting democracy.

• Number of our servicemen injured or maimed while promoting democracy.

• Number of foreign citizens killed promoting democracy.

• Number of terrorists springing up as a result of promoting democracy.

• Number of American citizens being spied on by the U.S. government, including those who think there are peaceful ways of promoting democracy.

• Telecommunication companies assisting in illegal wiretaps and surveillance, and being granted immunity for it after the fact.

• Telecommunication companies aiding communist countries with technology to monitor and control internet access and punish thought crimes, some of them ratting out their customers to spend years in prison for writing articles.

• Number of rights and liberties flagrantly violated by the U.S. government through legislation and executive order.

• Continuing property seizures through asset forfeiture laws and eminent domain abuse.

What kind of predictions can be made for 2008?

• The elite ruling class who are running for president (except Ron Paul) will continue to promise ever more benefits by taking over governmental control of ever increasing sectors of the economy, hoping to buy votes from voters who expect to vote themselves benefits out of other people's pockets.

• Bankruptcies, foreclosures, and business failures will continue to soar. Bankruptcies and foreclosures will be blamed on stupid consumers, and business failures will be cheered as the downfall of greedy capitalist businessmen who deserve to be poor like the rest of us, only doubly so.

• Unemployment will rise, although only the number of people collecting unemployment benefits will be reported. Those who are permanently muscled out of the job market and who have run out of benefits will simply be ignored.

• Politicians who consider themselves to be the elite ruling class (not Ron Paul), who have all stated that they think the economy is healthy, will feign surprise and blame business and economic conditions on failures of the free market and deregulation (which wasn't deregulation). The onslaught of controls, regulations, fees, permits, inspections, penalties, fines, rules, incentives, subsidies, grants, corporate welfare, special privileges, graft, and bribery through lobbying will continue and accelerate.

• Capital flight will accelerate in anticipation of confiscatory protectionist legislation which will be advanced as a solution to save the economy and stop those greedy businessmen from staying rich while we all suffer.

• Inflation will continue to rage along, despite fudging of the numbers by the government in attempting to hide it.

• The recession already in progress will be called a temporary slowdown and ignored as long as infusions of freshly printed money can keep the dollar prices of the stock market from crashing.

• As soon as it appears to the Federal Reserve Bank that the impending dollar collapse threatens the banking system more than the mountain of fraudulent paper they are writing off and papering over with 'air-dollars', they will suddenly and dramatically increase interest rates in order to try to prop up the dollar.

• The Fed reversal on interest rates will cause a drastic drop in credit and money creation, sparking a new wave of business failures, a free fall in housing prices with lower sales, and possibly panic selling on the stock exchange. (See 1929)

• The stock market crash, if it happens, will be called a correction, and will be blamed on stupid investors panicking. Advice will be given to 'go long', and 'stay the course'. The message will be repeated on every financial channel, all day, every day, and printed in every newspaper, with every sophomoric writer called upon to put a fresh spin on the story. “Stay in.” God help you if your retirement fund is in there.

• The ensuing depression will be called a recession, or stag-flation, or some new catchy term.

• Presidential candidates (except Ron Paul) will welcome this turn of events, and will climb on their perches, braying loudly and with conviction about how the free market has failed us, all of the problems are caused by deregulation (which isn't deregulation) and lack of government oversight, and how we need government controls and more taxes to 'invest in our future'. They might even even talk of pricing controls in the stock market or some other idiocy like government insurance for stock market retirement funds “to protect the consumer”.

• The economic crisis wrought by intervention, controls, meddling, rapacious taxation, and ruinous inflation will be seized upon by politicians (except Ron Paul), claiming that nobody except the government will be able to provide health care under such conditions. Which would guarantee themselves more influence as the overseers of yet more intervention, controls, meddling, rapacious taxation, and of course ever more ruinous inflation to pay for it.

• If economic catastrophe happens soon enough, news media outlets across the land will bray that only a statist who promises strict controls and higher taxes to 'balance the budget' and take care of everyone should be considered for president. All debate will shift to which candidate has the best plan for controlling the economy. (See Weimar Germany)

• The internet will come alive more than ever as the only source of reliable news and analysis on the causes of the situation. People will increasingly self-educate themselves on basic economics and the nature of the horrible, evil immorality that is debt-based fiat currency. The groundswell of resistance to the tyranny of corporatist fascism and the false alternative of corporatist socialism will grow ever faster. Distrust of news outlets by the public will become even more widespread as news outlets discredit themselves by spouting the government line and rudely dismissing freedom as a workable alternative. Will it be enough to counteract stupid voters who still think there is still enough surplus left in the economy that they can get the government to steal it for them? It's still too early to say.

By summer of 2008, if current policy continues, the predictions for 2009 will be all too easy to make. Police state controls labeled with benign-sounding names, capital flight by any means possible, and flight of productive people to any economic haven they can find. As in every other nation, state, or city that tried it, too much control and taxation causes capital and the people who can create it to leave the territory. The ones who get left behind are those who vote themselves benefits at others' expense, and those who rule them by promising the benefits. As the plunder available to loot becomes ever less, the area sinks to third world status, life becomes cheap, and gangs at the street and government level make living conditions dangerous and intolerable. The poorest and most desperate, who are unable to leave, are stranded there with their masters and powerless to change their condition because of the powers they voted to grant over themselves. Shall we continue this experiment in the United States of America?

The statists have more faith in the remnants of the free market than free market advocates do. They think there is no limit to the amount of taxation, controls, and worthless fiat paper money that can be inflicted on an economy, beyond which it will collapse. My fear is that we may have passed that tipping point, and unless corrections are made soon, all that is left is to watch the numbers come in as the free fall continues.

Comments and flames welcome.