Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Evidently yesterday many Italians stayed home from work (in Rome), due to the predictions of a seismologist Rafaele Bendani. The best part of this was that this predication was made in 1915,  so that must make it a legitimate reason to shut down a city.

Then there is Family Radio who claims that Judgement Day will be on May 21st, and Christ will return on that day. Now the world won’t end that day (luckily), but God will destroy the earth in October, after the rapture (I assume). There is also the now famous (as portrayed in the movie 2012) Mayan Calendar story where the world will end on December 21st 2012.

Now, I have spoken about the ability of financial soothsayers to predict the future of stocks, and such, but this is taking the Weatherman theory to the extreme. The Weatherman Theory is that eventually, no matter how outlandish your predictions are you will eventually be right (or you won’t be around to see the results, so in your mind, you must have been right), if you make enough predictions.

Nostradamus, a REAL Pesimist

What is gained by all of this doom and gloom? Notoriety for one thing (just ask Nostradamus, no wait he is dead), just think how famous you might be if you were the one to predict the end of the world? Come to think of it, I think I could live without that lofty title.

Financial Apocalypse?

This same kind of doom and gloom for the Financial Markets continues with various folks saying that the U.S. will be going back to the Gold Standard, or how the Stock Markets will fail and we will go back to a full barter system (i.e. the Financial Apocalypse). Will this happen? It’s all possible, that is the intricacy of life is that it is not entirely predictable and yes horrible catastrophic things can transpire with little or no warning (ask the folks in Japan about that). If you knew exactly what was going to happen every day of your life, would that be very enjoyable?

Will there be a stock market correction/crash/adjustment/implosion, in the next few years? Undoubtedly, will there be a recovery, most likely, yes. Will it rain tomorrow? Yes, somewhere it will rain on Thursday. As usual, I do not stand by those predictions about the stock market, the gold standard or whether I can get out of debt quickly, I will leave the DOOM and GLOOM predictions to various churches, the government and possibly a few weathermen.