Finally, 2025 Predictions, Scored
We have kept score
The judges have refereed and umpired and adjudicated the 2025 Finally Predictions, and they have awarded the House a total of 29 out of 48 possible points, or 60%, which means that are doing pretty well but not so well that our predictions are flimsy and overly easy!
Here is the roundup of this past year.
On the correct side of the ledger:
There was no new major shooting war involving Russia, China, North Korea, or Pakistan.
Iran was severely pummeled by air.
Houthis were at least temporarily removed as a plausible regional threat.
Israel remains in control of Gaza.
More than twenty Israeli hostages were recovered alive (BH).
The conservative Josef Merz was elected Chancellor of Germany.
Karol Nawrocki won the Polish election with the backing of the Law and Justice party.
Javier Milei continues his successful reform ride.
Kamala Harris has disappeared (more than she’d like to).
America is building its border wall. The One Big Beautiful Bill provided several billion dollars for it, and TX and AZ are building their own.
Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Defense Secretary (Secretary of War).
Biggest use case of AI does appear to be software development.
S&P 500 did end the year up 10%: about 18%.
QQQ did end the year up 10%: about 22%.
IWM did end the year up 10%: about 14%.
American cities did suffer more than fifty major crimes from illegal immigrant gangs or solo actors. (That was perhaps regrettably an easier prediction than one had imagined.)
Tik Tok did escape American shutdown.
Leeds United was promoted to the Premier League. המבין יבין.) MOT!
The first real federal anti-woke-mind-virus financial blow landed on a major university’s jaw. Many. Trump vs. Everybody.
The Vatican’s Jubilee year drew somewhere around 35 million visitors, so the judges will give us a W on that. Close enough.
Ukraine and Russia did begin a form of formal negotiations for a settlement but did not achieve a lasting ceasefire.
Zero Supreme Court Justices retired. I did say this was a safer prediction, and it was.
Emmanuel Macron was forced to find (yet) another Prime Minister. Yup. More than one. French surrender monkeys. If the judges could award double credit, they would. But they can’t.
In the category of Partial Credit:
Germany has not seriously tabled legislation to remigrate Syrians, but it did send back a convicted felon back to Syria in December 2025, for the first time in fifteen years, which represents at least a teeny tiny piece of evidence that Europe is not yet entirely committed to its own self-immolation.
Haiti’s civil society has not fully collapsed, but it’s nearly there, and, though reliable data are hard to get, it appears perhaps more than 10,000 citizens have died from violence and disease alone in 2025
Asylum Policy in the West has started to take a serious turn, but not enough, not yet. The hapless Starmer government in the UK has started to make moves but still nothing close to a major shift. Italy’s Meloni is probably the strongest on the issue, but until a European government (setting our own opinions about it aside) sinks a migrant vessel in spectacular fashion, resetting international legal expectations, and until another follows the Polish or Hungarian example and just says “zero,” the waves may continue.
DOGE did not find $300B in savings. DOGE’s high-profile campaign waned much more quickly than one had expected. But, according to their own site, at least, they found $214B of savings this year. Breathless quibbling continues in media about how much they’ve actually saved, but it’s clearly a lot.
Falling global birth rates prompt increasingly serious discussion about religion and not just so-called child-friendly labor policy. It is starting.
Europe suffered approximately ten significant Islamist terror attacks in 2025. However, if we included foiled attempts, the predicted number of 10 is regrettably met and exceeded. And if we include Australia . . .
NYC Mayor Eric Adams did not resign before Election Day, but he did decline to run for reelection.
A name brand university was to dismantle its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion infrastructure: partial credit only, as UNC, Florida, etc., have been forced by state legislature. No major university has done it on its own. Boards continue their cowardice. Tenured faculty are even worse. This part of the prediction has proven to be squarely true: “A whole raft of other administrators, the commissariat, who are effectively unemployable outside this political grift, are terrified and mount a full-throated defense of their existence.”
John Fetterman has not quite emerged as the face of the Democratic Party, but he is one of them. Tim Walz has continued to collapse into a gooey puddle of his own making in light of the enormous Somali fraud that flourished under his watch.
Trump and Musk were to continue to have a strong working relationship in 2025. It has been up and down.
What we got Wrong:
Taylor Swift backlash has not begun. Oh, well, a girl can dream.
Tulsi Gabbard was confirmed as Director of National Intelligence.
OIH did NOT end the year up 10%: about 2%.
BTC did NOT hit $150,000. High was about $126,000.
Euro did NOT depreciate 5% against the USD: it appreciated by about 15%.
A right-wing terror attack somewhere in the West did NOT occur and therefore did NOT startle the entire political spectrum. However the Tucker Carlson interview of Nick F did surface or re-surface the insanity of a portion of the right-wing world, including one that wants to kill a lot of people.
The Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl, not the Detroit Lions. Which fact, if you know something about me, has recently filled me with pride! Fly, Eagles, Fly!
Boeing (ticker: BA) did not require extraordinary capital management measures that resulted in a federal or corporate bailout. They’ve been muddling through the briar patch.
Intel (ticker: INTC) was not bought or merged. But they basically received the bailout Boeing did not.
No major Western automaker went bankrupt or got merged out of existence.
Alex Mashinsky, the villainous criminal CEO and Founder of crypto “Unbank” Celsius, was not sentenced to thirty years in federal penitentiary but instead to twelve. Here is the transcript of a secret recording of his jailhouse conversation with Sam Bankman-Fried from 2024. This is the recording itself.
Pope Francis did die.
Summer 2025 was not the hottest on record in the Northern Hemisphere. It was the third hottest.
Abigail Spanberger defeated Winsome Earle-Sears by a lot of votes — the biggest margin in over 15 years. Lazy pols continue to make a huge amount of noise about the VA and NJ elections because they have no other way to make their living.