Ayoon Wa Azan (The Easiest Thing in the World is Speculation)

In the year 2050, Egypt will have become the twentieth largest economy in the world, with Saudi Arabia in 22nd place. This was predicted by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), one of the world’s few major banks that survived the ongoing global financial crisis, and a bank that was not linked to the scandals of businessmen who gave themselves millions and billions in bonuses, while they were losing the investments of ‘gullible’ people like the reader and me. But does HSBC’s reputation mean that we should believe what it says? The easiest thing in the world is to make long-term speculations, because those who make them and those who read them will leave this world before their time comes, and if they are still alive by then, then they will be so old that they would have forgotten their names and the names of those who made speculations, let alone the speculations themselves. In 2050, I predict that the Arabs will be one unified democratic nation from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf, and their economy will compete with that of the United States and China, while the poor nations of Europe will stand at our door to beg for economic deals that would give them favored nation-states status, as their citizens migrate south to our countries. Why not? I predict this and I insist that it will happen, and ask the reader to return to me on this day in 2050 to confront me with what I wrote, whether it will prove true or false. I am joking of course. Seriously though, I expect that my predictions above will prove to be ‘nonsense’, because if we take the recent years as a guide, measure and indicator, we will see that the nation is moving quickly ahead, but towards the abyss, in terms of the economy, democracy, civil rights and equality between the sexes. Returning to HSBC and its predictions; while I wish that they will all come true, and I am willing to make vows, and to pray and fast for them to become real, I find it difficult to understand how the bank has made its predictions. The first ten countries in 2050 are respectively: China, the United States, India, Japan, Germany, Britain, Brazil, Mexico, France, and Canada in tenth place. I stop at Mexico. Mexico today is fighting a fateful war against drug gangs which appear stronger than the police and the army, killing anyone they want whenever and wherever they want, including senior security officers and officials. How will Mexico overcome all these drawbacks, to occupy the eighth place in the global economy? Personally, I do not have an answer. Then the following ten places begin with Italy, which is bankrupt today, in eleventh place, followed by Turkey, South Korea, Spain, Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, Argentina and Egypt in twentieth place. Here too, it is the hope of my life for Egypt to really become the twentieth biggest economy, being ‘a dear unforgettable love’ of mine. But will this really happen? The demographic trend, or population growth, which was one of the factors the bank used to make its predictions, is true. However, the Egyptian economy today is undergoing a massive crisis, while education in Egypt is bad, and may need forty years to be fixed before we can start reaping the benefits. Yet, the bank, which has a rare good reputation among banks, sees Egypt in twentieth place in 2050, followed by Saudi Arabia (22), Algeria (34) , the United Arab Emirates (46), Kuwait (54) , Morocco (55), Libya (58), Syria (63), Tunisia (67), Lebanon (69), Oman (72), Iraq (77), Qatar (78) , Jordan (79), Bahrain (93) and Yemen (98). I want to thank the bank for having more confidence in us than we do ourselves. But I call on the reader not to be overconfident about these promises or to go on to believe that his children’s generation will enjoy what we have been deprived of. This is because as I went over the figures I cited here, which date back to 2011, I found that some of them greatly diverge from the predictions of the same bank in 2010. In one year, the Philippines climbed 27 places to occupy its present place (16), while Egypt climbed 15 ranks (to 20 as I mentioned), Malaysia 17 (21), Peru 20 (26) and so forth. What are the ranks in one year? Only the bank will know the answer. After every rise, there is a drop, as the saying goes. But I hope nonetheless that the bank’s predictions will hold true, and the saying will be proven wrong.