OK I've got it: financially 2008 is going to be one hell of a rollercoaster drive. I recently cashed in a dollar cheque from my US publisher at $2.22 to the pound. I should have waited. Predicting which way the pound or dollar is going to go is for experts. I called it wrong and now the dollar is rising again. In the Daily Telegraph they say the pound will fall all the way back to $1.70 in the spring. Don't you just hate it when you get it wrong. But that's the future for you - it is so darn hard to predict.

My misfortune is not really serious, and if I had any spare cash, visiting the USA next year might be a real bargain for anyone in the Sterling or Eurozone.  Hell, the way the dollar and the pound is going, someone is going end up buying some very big US/UK companies with mere chump change.  It's sad to think that Jaguar and Landrover, such iconic UK companies will go this January. Tata from India is the front runner. But maybe there's justice in this. Tata have the money and maybe they'll invest? They are getting a deal. The new Jag looks a real winner and has the all important Jay Leno rave for it. India has changed and there is some karma involved with Indian companies buying up English ones. (Even if they are owned by Ford America.) Personally if I were Ford I'd ditch the Ford brand and keep Jaguar, Volvo and Landrover. When did you drive a Ford lately? Me niether.  But then again, like most people living outside America, and quite a lot inside America apparently, I don't want a car made in the USA.  With diesel at $9 bucks a gallon in the UK and rising, I can barely afford to run my Fiat Stilo coupe and that does 50mpg!  I'd have to be Becks to be able to fill up the average US vehicle and do the 1000 miles I do every month commuting. I am tempted by the new Mini Clubman though and hope I don't succumb.

The trouble isn't me, Joe Schmo and Jill down the road however.  The dollar falling must be giving heart attacks to the Saudis and other oil-producers.  Oil may well be at around $95 a barrel (Dec 31st price), but they are swapping oil for paper and that paper is worth a third less than it was when Bush launched his war against Iraq and Afghanistan.  The Chinese, even India, everyone who makes things and pumps oil are building mountains out of American paper and sending them real things, food, oil, furniture, cars, planes, you name it to the USA.  I know this is called 'world trade'; but when you think about it, with the dollar falling so fast, they aren't getting a good deal and if they ever wake up to that fact, things could get nasty.  Of course China could stop shadowing the dollar, or sell it's dollars for Euros, or just wade in with its billions and buy everything.  The American Banks, GE, GM, Ford, whatever and get them all at knock down prices too.  Quite how Americans will feel about that and finding that they have to work for less and less dollars a day, like they do in China; or be replaced, I wonder.  Ever heard of a Chinese Trade Union? It's a long time to wait for Mr Obama to fix things. Yes, I will nail my flag to the wall and say Obama should win the race for the Presidency in 2008. You can keep Huckabee and his guitar. Hillary is in the lead and there's a lot of nostalgia for Bill. Super Tuesday will reveal all.

I have just been to Belgium for Christmas, staying in a magnificent Chateau surrounded by a moat. Names leap out at you as you drive on the E111 towards Luxembourg. Waterloo being the most important and decisive. I realised that here Becky Sharpe followed her man through battles in Vanity Fair, and magic saved the Wellington in Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Belgium has meant little to me except as a place where beaurocrats invents new ways to make life awkward for everyone in Europe. But almost every turn-off on the highway points to some battle or treaty and you can see that this was a country so used to being trampled on by history it is no wonder now that it takes its revenge. In the Chateau there were still the broken red seals on the doors where the German occupiers were not supposed to go, the wooden door is still stoved in where they raided the magnificent cellar. History never felt so real. And over there, the other side of the moat where they took people to shoot... they grow pines. Belgium is riddled with Chateaus, small or large and each were built with moats and defensible gates. Inside you could live in peace, but it says a great deal about what it was like to live outside the gates. Now the smaller Chateaus are being renovated, used for weekend parties by Eurocrats living high on the hog. There is a palpable moat envy going on as they rival each other in 'water management'. Perhaps they weren't so crazy, those Chateau builders, trying to keep the world out.

We are in an exciting period in history.  There is a parallel.  The moment power slipped away from the British Empire around 1905 onwards, as American and German industrial might began to rise.  As the three jostled for world power, something had to give and along came WW1 to settle it.  Huge numbers died, quickly followed by a flu pandemic with took another 50 million worldwide with it.  Ironically it meant, as factories began to automate tasks and design more efficiently, less people were needed to produce more goods; the unfortunate dead (had they lived) possibly escaped years of unemployment.

This period saw a huge psychological change in the world, not to mention the rapid rise of electric power and it's manifestation in all things.  England and USA of 1914 were in flux and by 1920 both were different countries as technology transformed absolutely everything. If the Great War shifted morals, technology moved ideas. In 20 short years the car, truck, tractors, petrol engine, telephone, telex, colour photography, fast food, movies, recorded music, you name it had completely changed the way people lived, forever.  They knew it too. See Chaplin's Modern Times or Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Radio was about to change life even more.  (You can make your own list: communism, advertising, mass consumption, department stores, mail order, credit, tarmac, tanks, poison gas, jazz).  There was an explosion of inventions and applications and it must have been dizzying.  It all came to head with the great slump of 1929-33 and then, yet another stupid war.

The same rapid change that happened in the early 20th century Europe has happened in our lifetime and we seem to cope, or, at least think we cope.  The revolution in our lives has been the web, the speed of instant communication, social networking, and globalization.  Again, twenty years.  Online-shopping is already transforming the high street into a virtual one, along with massive expansion of credit, consumer power, the economic effect of China in capping inflation for a few years. The high street is changing fast and the virtual world of shopping long ago predicted by Neal Stephenson and William Gibson is already here. Big name companies are disappearing and you will see many boarded up windows on main street next year and more after that. Shops won't disappear however, what will happen is that consumers will buy certain things on-line because they can, others will appreciate the personal service that real shops can offer. Just as we all hate the call centre culture that the banks, water and power services have all embraced, there will be a niche for someone to reinvent personal, human service, where you can sort out problems. In fact, I predict the 'Problem' shop will be become big business - they will have the secret numbers of your bank branch, or know how to talk to British Gas directly or even more impossilbe BT. Cutting out the human element will always lead to anger and stress

You can see the future changing before your eyes in the cinema. The trailers are for highly realistic video games and of course they are extremely violent, another clue as to what kind of century we shall have. But, of course, our moronic political leaders had to spoil it by attacking Iraq and stir up a hornets nest of resentment, worldwide. *At least we are spared attacking Iran now. What gall to finally admit they knew Iran had no nuclear bomb development going on for the last four years. Trust a politician? I don't think so. Ask anyone in Kenya if they trust a politician right now.
           
Everything speeds up, now. We are fatter, older.  The population in 1900 was at most 1.5 billion worldwide.  Now it is 6.5 billion and growing and we have belatedly woken up to the fact that we have triggered an endgame with the whole earth climate.  It may well be a natural cycle, but global warming could a lot worse now simply because so many billions are consuming everything and spewing pollution into the air and sea. This critical mass of humanity may have speeded up the process and we will have nowhere to hide. Will we cut emissions to save the planet in time? I doubt it. It'll be a fudge. We shall regret it at leisure, no doubt.
The success of 'I am legend' based on the book by Robert Mattheson and starring Will Smith is less to do with Will Smith and more to do with our own fears that we are too many, a deep seated fear that nature will fight back. If not a virus, then war will get us all. There is plenty of evidence in history to nurture this fear.

What has this got to do with the dollar?  Not much. The dollar would have fallen anyway, just like the ice melts quite naturally in the Artic.  But it's the speed of change that is new.  Economic and political power is draining away from the USA to Russia and China and others and this will produce conflict and uncertainty.  We don't, as a rule, like conflict and uncertainty.  Palestine, Lebanon, Eastern Europe have lived with it for almost a whole century and trust is always the first casualty. Even as I write this Kosovo is about to erupt in a pointless war caused by resentful Serbs. (Still waiting for that rocket to go off).

The dollar falls and right now, everyone is thinking 'bargains' from cars, to clothes to whole industries.  But America has been the force for global peace for over a hundred years.  America has literally policed and guided us through our problems and more than once saved Europe's collective ass, and quite a few other countries.  Sure it has made mistakes, like now in Iraq; but you think you want to live in a world where men like Putin are top dog?  Or geriatric communist leaders?  We watch with fascination as we wonder if it will be Hilary or Obama for President, or heaven forbid, Huckabee. But will this be the last time we look with hope and interest?  Will their victory and the common sense of a Democratic administration come too late to save them and us?  We watch with horror as Russia has sham elections and quake as to which monsters will emerge to turn off the supply of gas to keep our houses warm. How will they use their ill-gotten billions?  For good or evil? Is there a Carnegie in Moscow?

History is on fast forward now.  Almost anything can happen and will. The sub-prime infection is a capitalist virus, home grown by greedy bankers and the foolish who bought mortgages they cannot pay. (I may well be one myself soon if house prices dip). The alternative to our way of life and freedoms isn't at all obvious and if you aren't thinking about the future, you should be.  It's here.

© Sam North Jan 1st 2008

Author Bio
Sam North is the author of Diamonds – The Rush of ’72 & The Curse of the Nibelung – A Sherlock Holmes Mystery. He runs the Masters in Creative Writing Programme at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He divides his time between Vancouver, Canada and the UK.

The Great Flu Pandemic is coming. No one can stop it. Everything your Government said would protect you is a lie. In 1919 a worldwide flu pandemic killed 50 million people. The next pandemic could wipe out as many as 500 million – the bad news, it might already be here. Reviews: 'It will keep readers in suspense, laced with gritty-gallows humor' Charlie Dickinson 'Beautiful, plausible, and sickeningly addictive, Another Place to Die will terrify you, thrill you, and make you petrified of anyone who comes near you...'. Roxy Williams - Amazon.co.uk Available from Amazon.com and direct from the publisher Lulu Press by order at Waterstones in the UK

ANOTHER PLACE TO DIE by Sam North Lulu Press – ISBN:1-84753-899-1 $18 Retail – Published January 2007 Order your copy now Read Ian Middleton's Review

Read the first chapter on line and order it now.
This might well be the one book you need this winter.
Available from Amazon.com
Direct from the publisher Lulu Press and Waterstones in the UK