Dr. Ravi Batra

This is how a washer man slams clothes violently on a rock.

 

2016 Will Be a Tumultuous Year

 

I have written many books in my life and some of them made a variety of forecasts. For instance in a book published at the end of 2006, I pinpointed the year in which a major recession would start in the United States and then engulf the world. Some of my words in The New Golden Age were:

The economy will steadily get worse with home prices falling and layoffs rising…(p.173)

The housing bubble appears to be a major event, which once had a lot of momentum but is now beginning to recede. It is likely to burst in 2008, give or take a year. The burst could start in 2007 and continue till 2009. (p.175)

    The economy could still face a steep recession because of rising oil prices, but avoid the calamity of a depression. Unemployment could rise to the level of 10 percent or more. (p.179)

The rest is history. The housing bubble punctured in mid-2007, whereas, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the so-called Great Recession began in December 2007 and ended in July 2009. In addition the stock markets crashed between October 2007 and March 2009, while unemployment rose to 10% by the end of 2010.

   About oil, my forecast was that “the current bubble could go on till 2011 and then crash in 2012.” (p. 175.) This forecast was off slightly, because the oil price began to collapse in 2014,  and continues to crash. However, remember that all these forecasts were made in 2006.

    Now the question is: what is in store for us in 2016. Given that poverty in the United States is the worst in more than 50 years, a large swath of Americans—even the poor around the world – looks forward to a major change in society; they see how money has corrupted politics and  economic policy; they feel hopeless and wish to God that some one would put an end to the rule of money. It is in this spirit, I have written a poem, which ends with a message of hope in 2016. (I started writing this poem in 2010 and  completed it last December.)

 

God’s Washer Man Plan: A New Year Message

 

When righteousness dies and sin prevails

God makes a plan to end travails

Leaders rise to destroy greed and cruelty

To restore honesty and end poverty

The wicked tremble as crowds roar

You will not grab our wealth any more

The corrupt are put to slander and shame

Economists helping them get the blame

O Big Business, heed the clarion call

For God is about to make you fall

Our Father is now well enraged

His washer man plan is taking shape

A washer man slams clothes on jagged rocks

To  cleanse them of dirt and dross

God has lifted rich CEOs to a new height

To slam them down in a terrible blight

They will now pay for stealing from the poor

And go to jail, with impunity no more

This will end the rule of acquisitors

While sanity, humanity and people will be victors

Watch the world dance in celebration

As tyrants face humiliation

The oligarchs are arrogant and mean

Worry not, God’s plan will start in 2016