Hola Libertinus!

Welcome to 2025. A fresh year, a fresh batch of predictions—some bold, some phocine, and some that might even be right.

We’ve sifted through hours of expert forecasts so you don’t have to—breaking them down, dissecting their logic, and scoring them on a rigorous (we promise) 10-point scale.

Here’s the twist: instead of ranking how likely they are to be right, we’re evaluating the thought process and logic behind the predictions.

After all, independent thinking starts with challenging assumptions, questioning certainty, and embracing the unpredictable.

So grab a drink, settle in, and let’s take a risk-based dive into what 2025 might have in store.

🗞️ 2025 PREDICTIONS ROUNDUP

⏩ Michael Saylor: The Bitcoin Bull Run Is About To Get INSANE in 2025

Summary: "The Party's Over Folks."

Kidding—Saylor’s predictions are as evangelical as ever. For 2025, he quintuples down on Bitcoin, declaring it the "gold standard" of the 21st century. He sees increasing institutional and government adoption as Bitcoin’s ticket to global dominance.

Tactically, he predicts $180,000 as the top of this bull run.

Our Take: If confidence were currency, Saylor would already be a trillionaire. While he's an articulate BTC spokesperson and we admire his unwavering commitment—putting capital where his mouth is—let’s not confuse ideology with inevitability. And look, we like Bitcoin, but there are still significant obstacles to Bitcoin achieving gold's market cap, including regulatory hurdles, network challenges, and the small matter of convincing the average person it’s more than “magic internet money.”

Libertas Score: 1/10. We’ll give him this: Saylor’s borderline-fanatical rhetoric in Bitcoin as the savior of modern finance is often hypnotic, but betting the farm on a single crop is how you end up hungry. Probabilistic thinking requires we prepare for all scenarios, not just a Bitcoin utopia.

⏩ Ian Bremmer – The Biggest Global Risks for 2025

Summary: “Welcome to the Jungle.”

Ian Bremmer is back with his annual list of top risks, offering a sobering tour through a global landscape defined by chaos, unpredictability, and a distinct lack of leadership. In Bremmer's view, the U.S. has traded its multilateral ideals for a more transactional, self-interested approach, and everyone else is just trying to stay out of trouble. Meanwhile, Trump’s return to power promises instability, both at home and abroad, though Bremmer stops short of predicting the fall of democracy.

Our Take: Bremmer’s analysis is sharp, and his explicit focus on risks (rather than crystal-ball predictions) is exactly how we should be thinking. But the world hasn't gone full Thunderdome yet. It's easy to forget that despite the very real conflicts, the world is generally considered to be more peaceful and cooperative now than at any other point in recorded history. (Note to self: you’ve still got to get around to reading Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature)

Libertas Score: 7/10. Bremmer earns points for probability-based thinking and a clear-eyed approach to global risks. But he loses marks for not leaving enough room for resilience, innovation, or even the occasional black swan. What if the aliens come in peace, Bremmer?

⏩ Money & Macro – The World in 2025

Summary: “Demographics, Debt, and Difficult Decisions.”

Joeri from Money & Macro serves up a no-nonsense forecast for 2025, focusing on two slow-moving trainwrecks: aging populations and runaway government debt. From Europe’s aging workforce to Japan’s ballooning healthcare costs and China’s retirement-age tinkering, demographic decline takes center stage. Couple that with unsustainable debt loads and you’ve got a recipe for governments facing some very tough choices: austerity, financial repression, or some Devil’s bargain of both.

Our Take: Joeri’s ability to break down big-picture economic trends is as sharp as ever, especially his emphasis on how demographics are reshaping economies in real-time. But while his focus on debt feels on-point, we’re less sure about his seeming optimism on how smoothly these challenges might be managed. Governments tend to delay the inevitable until it’s an even bigger mess, and austerity plus currency crises tend to create a little too exciting times to be alive—just ask Argentina.

Libertas Score: 9/10. We always appreciate what Joeri has to say about the world, even when we disagree with him. He scores high marks here for his framing as "things to look out for" and his acknowledgement that the global economy is so complicated it's difficult to predict. He even takes the wind out of his own sails by admitting that the specifics of the trends he discusses are unlikely to come to fruition, and checks his own biases. Bravo! If only more analysts were this self-aware.

⏩ Luke Gromen: 2025 Outlook

Summary: "The Apocalyptic U.S. Dollar Farewell Tour!"

Luke Gromen is back with his trademark message: the U.S. dollar's reserve currency dominance is fading fast. In his latest commentary, Gromen argues that unsustainable deficits, shifting geopolitics, and central banks diversifying away from USD exposure are pushing the dollar toward its twilight years. He paints a vivid picture of a post-dollar world where commodities, alternative currencies, and gold rule the global financial order.

Our Take: Gromen’s macro insights are undeniably sharp, but his sense of timing feels... let’s say, ambitious. Thanks to Ray Dalio's work, we know that historical shifts in global reserve currencies—like the Dutch guilder to the British pound or the pound to the U.S. dollar—aren’t exactly “blink and you’ll miss it” events. Instead, they unfold over decades.

In fact, it was nearly a century for the guilder, and closer to 50 years for the pound.

These transitions require more than just economic shifts; they demand sweeping geopolitical and institutional changes. While Gromen points to China and other challengers, none yet present a comprehensive threat to the dollar’s entrenched liquidity, deep markets, and institutional trust. Not saying the dollar’s obituary isn’t already written—but the funeral’s probably not happening this decade.

Libertas Score: 3/10. Gromen’s insights into structural imbalances are valuable, but his persistent fatalism about the dollar's demise misses the mark on effective, probabilistic thinking. A post-dollar global financial order is almost certainly inevitable—yet far from the most likely in the short term.

⏩ Teal Swan – Forecast for 2025

Summary: "Reclaim Your Stolen Seal Skin"

Like the Selkies—mythical seal-human hybrids who shed their skins to walk on land—we’ve all been robbed of our natural birthright: our silky-soft seal skins, which are essential for returning to the sea, our true home. When we were young and vulnerable, our skins were stolen from us by society. This theft trapped us in a world where we’ve had to hide our true essence beneath layers of shame and falsehood, forced into a life of adaptation and survival far removed from the unbridled freedom of the ocean.

But in 2025, the call of the ocean will become impossible to ignore. This is the year we will finally retrieve our skins and return to our true liberated essence.

The process won’t be easy. First, the tough outer shells we developed to survive on land will break down, leaving us raw, exposed, and deeply vulnerable. But as we shed these false selves, we’ll feel the rising tide of our essence, guiding us back to who we were always meant to be. This is the year we reclaim our oh-so-caressable seal skins and dive back into the ocean of authenticity.

Our Take: Finally, someone brave enough to tackle the hidden epidemic of our stolen fur suits! But seriously, Teal's insights are unparalleled in the world of macroeconomic and geopolitical analysis. While her forecasting framework may appear obscure at first, when you take the time to read between the lines, it becomes clear that she anticipates a withdrawal of the US from its post-Bretton Woods era role as protector of the global order, revealing the true essence of the superpower.

She also points to the inevitable rise of nationalism as a global trend as nations across the world refuse to settle for less than living true to their natures. As nations turn inward there will be a period of vulnerability, and in this interim populist strongmen leaders will leverage their masculine polarity to initiate vibrations leading to their ascension.

Libertas Score: 10/10. Teal gets top marks for courage in addressing humanity’s most pressing existential crisis and for bringing our seal-hybrid essence into the mainstream geopolitical discourse.

Predicting the future is hard, folks.

So let's take a moment to salute everyone who put their reputations on the line with bold predictions and psudomystical relevations.

Sidenote: here are Jim Cramer’s 2025 stock predictions, in case you wanna, you know, completely ignore them or, if you’re in a contrarian mood, do the inverse.

But here’s the thing: as daring as these forecasts are, the future doesn’t owe anyone logic or consistency.

Economies zig when you expect them to zag.

Black swans (and UAPs) appear out of nowhere.

And sometimes, things just refuse to fall apart as dramatically as predicted.

(Just ask the perma-doomers who’ve been beating the same drum for decades.)

For us mere mortals trying to navigate it all, the key isn’t to find the “One True Vision of What’s Coming.”

Instead, you need to think probabilistically:

Hedge your bets. Diversify your risks. Assume you’ll be wrong. And plan to survive anyway.

In the end, predictions are fun, dramatic, and occasionally insightful, but reality rarely follows the script we write for it.

So take these forecasts with a grain of salt, ruminate on their perspectives, and focus on building the kind of resilience that can weather whatever storm 2025 decides to throw our way.

Sic semper debitoribus,
~ West & Zack

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