Predictions on what will be the next big thing

I'd like to figure out how to do good predictions.  Something like a forecasting system.  Hopefully, it would work better than the weatherman's forecast.

One thing you might want to look out for is inflation.  There has been a lot of back and forth on this.  Inflation or deflation.  There are those who belong to the deflation camp.  I belong to the inflation camp.  Either way, it isn't good. One isn't any better than the other.  Either way will lead to some type of financial debacle.  Both outcomes have at its root the same cause, yet different effects depending on the response to the cause.

I think the cause of the problem is energy, or lack of energy.  Not from actual shortages, but from imposed shortages.  The imposed shortages are what's driving up the cost of energy.  This in turn is causing the government to respond with an inflationary monetary policy.  This is what we have now.  If that approach changes, we may revert to a deflationary crash.  That is, if monetary stimulus is removed, the asset bubble will pop yet again.  Prices will fall.  The end result will be bankruptcy on a national scale.  Hence, the inflationary policy which will buy some time.  But monetary policy doesn't address the energy issue.  It is treating the symptoms, not the disease.  Fooling around with monetary policy and stimulus achieves nothing on its own.

We need a growth policy.  Not a growth in government, but growth in the economy.  In order to achieve this growth, the energy problem must be solved.  Something similar happened in the seventies.  The government interfered with the markets and artificially imposed scarcity which drove prices upward.  Once Reagan removed this, the markets stabilized for twenty years.  But after twenty years, the economic growth caught up with supply.  Now growth is bumping up against the constraint of a lack of energy.  The worlds energy supply is tight.  In order to deal with this, economic growth must slow down and allow supply to catch up.  If it doesn't, higher prices are inevitable.

My impression is that not enough has been done about the energy problem.  If the economy improves, the price of oil will go up again and that will cause a big drag on the economy.  The FED may revert to an inflation fighting bias and that would mean tight money and another recession.  Or if the economy doesn't improve, the price of oil will remain somewhat lower and more tolerable level.  Either way, the energy problem is not solved and the economy can't grow.

Neither party is addressing this issue adequately.  The arguments are about fiscal and monetary policy.  It needs to be about energy.  How to produce it and how to conserve it.  It is not an either or proposition.  More needs to be produced, less needs to be consumed.  Only then can supply and demand be brought into balance and economic growth can take place.

So my prediction is a continuation of inflation because it buys time.  A deflationary bust is a nonstarter.