Back in late September I posted a comment saying that 2011 was starting to feel like the 1930s again. Interesting, therefore, to see something on Newsnight (BBC) tonight saying much the same thing, but with a bit more depth behind it. If you missed it the parallels are social unrest, politicized debt, the breakdown of an international currency (Gold Standard in the 1930s, the Euro in 2011), an inter-bank lending crisis and finger pointing. To that I’d also add the printing of money and inflation (or that could be deflation depending on your point of view)

The point about finger pointing is important. When things go wrong people often look for other people to blame and everyone runs to protect themselves. In the 1930s there was a significant rightward shift, a rise in populism and rising anger against ethic minorities.

This is all happening again, but the ultimate implication implication could be the end of globalization, something I wrote about in 2010. Of course the really really big question is does it end like it ended in the 1930s?

BTW, this post by about why the 1930s went bad by Newsnight’s economics editor is worth a look.

Remember Japan’s lost decade in the 1990s? Possibly not, but essentially what happened was that a combination of low interest rates, rapidly rising land/real estate values, borrowing and speculation ended when Japan’s Ministry of Finance suddenly raised interest rates. This created a debt crisis followed by a banking crisis, with a number of banks being bailed out by the Japanese government.

The result was a collapse assets prices and a ten year recession with almost no economic growth. Sound familiar?

A critical difference though is unemployment, which in Japan at the time was high, but was nowhere near the levels now being seen in Europe, especially among young people. For example, the jobless rate for youth in Spain is currently 46%, in Greece it’s 43%, in Ireland it’s 32% and in Italy 27%. Trouble on the streets of Europe anyone?

It seems that people now expect me to do a new trend map each year. I was starting to think I’d run out of ideas about what to do with colours and lines when I had another thought – crosswords. Here’s a very early draft. The difficult bit, obviously, is linking one trend directly to another. For example, you can run localism directly off globalism, but some of the other connections are proving more difficult.

I spotted a blog post a few days ago about the return of the 20s aesthetic in fashion. I don’t know whether this is true, but if it is it’s weird because if anything we are re-living the 1930s not the 1920s.

26 words to describe 2012. Unless you live somewhere like Asia, in which case the list would be totally different. If you don’t recognise something look it up at Wordspy.com. BTW, I have a feeling that Bifurcation – meaning forking or splitting into two – could be the word for 2012.

Anxiety
Bifurcation
Contagion
Debt
Euro
Frugal
Greece
Hope
Inflation
Juvenoia
Kaput
Locavore
Marginal
Nostalgia
Ostalgia
Payoff
Quality
Regulation
Simplicity
Thrift
Unemployment
Volatile
Weisure
Xenophobia
Yearning
Zen mail

This was easier than I thought. I’ll flesh this out (and change my mind) over the coming months, but here’s the current list.

1. Mass intimacy
2. Augmented reality
3. Cloud services
4. Baking
5. Moral philosophy
6. Cuddly robots
7. Photovoltaics
8. Gameification
9. Ethically inclined fish
10. Near field communication

Note: This list is in no way ranked and, as always, does not represent the most important trends, merely new things that I find interesting or old things that are gaining momentum.

I’ve started to think about trends for the next 12-18 months and it’s come out as quite a depressing little list. Here they are. I will endeavour to put together something less pessimistic over the next few weeks.

1. Turbulence
2. Uncertainty
3. Fragility
4. Contagion
5. Risk aversion
6. Displacement activity
7. Intrinsic value
8. Security
9. Rage
10. Fear

Coming soon…an optimists guide to 2012