L U N C H M O N E Y — Seeing things in 2005
Levin predicted Paul Martin’s narrow victory, and U.S. president Bush’s win, and says Fed chairman Alan Greenspan will continue on the same course in 2005.

National Post - December 31, 2004 - By William Hanley

A corner table next to the bustling open kitchen at Matisse in the Marriott Hotel near Toronto’s midtown shopping district may not afford the best position to peer into the future, to “see” what might unfold in 2005. But here we are with professional clairvoyant Deborah Levin for the fourth annual lookahead lunch at Matisse, a venue we picked back in 2001 because Lunch Money knew and liked the restaurant and it was convenient for Levin.

On this blustery early December Friday, the Christmas luncheon business has not yet picked up, but Matisse is far from the tranquillity that Levin usually enjoys when she does readings at her east end Toronto home. “I get going right away with my clients,” she says, refusing to look at the menu. “We don’t mess around.”

Of course, lunch with Lunch Money is often all about not getting going right away, just messing around with a conversation over good food, seeing where the chat takes us. But next year, in December, 2005, we promise to repair to her home, a sanctuary with no background noise to impair her vision. After that reading, she says, she will cook us lunch.

And today, lunch will also have to wait, with our waiter resigned to hovering at a safe distance and making discreet inquiries from time to time as he tops up our sparkling water and brings a bread basket. (Eventually, Levin will order the salad of roasted beets, goat’s cheese, asparagus, quail eggs and truffle followed by the moules et frites. Lunch Money has a simple salad of field greens and the three rice seafood risotto.)

But first, Levin tries to focus — her eyes shut tight — on what 2005 might bring. Her eyes open wide, then narrow. “I don’t like what’s happening in the fall of 2005 with a political situation that has to do with [President George W.] Bush,” she says. “I don’t like that. There’s a political situation developing in the fall that’s really going to upset a lot of people. And the markets are going to be upset for a short period of time — maybe two or three weeks and then it will stabilize again. I think people should be very cautious. I think more likely it will be September because of a political situation instigated by Bush.”

Levin doesn’t follow the markets, even though she has clients who are involved in them and are looking for signs and signals. She concentrates on the general atmospherics of the future, receiving premonitions of what will unfold.

When we mention the Dow Jones industrial average, she says she sees a chart and a “bullet at some point on the chart. It’s reached a certain level, then it’s down. Some sort of critical point. I don’t know if it’s of historical significance. I think it will have been going down at this point.” A year ago, Levin was warning people to be patient with the market in July and August of 2004, saying they would have to “ride it out,” that it wouldn’t be the best time to be making decisions. In the event, the stock market did try investors’ patience sorely in the summer before hesitantly turning around and heading higher. This year, beside the Bushtriggered market upset in the fall, she “sees” some developments that will affect investors:

The Canadian dollar will “more or less” stay where it is. She says it’s going to drop a bit over the next three or four months — it fell sharply from around US85¢ subsequent to our meeting — but it’s going be fairly stable in 2005. (Her call that the loonie would dive to US69¢ in 2004 from US75¢ was well off the mark.)

The U.S. currency will continue to struggle, with "no significant improvement" in 2005.

Whatever momentum in the price of oil is now gone. “It’s lost its focus. It’s going to continue dropping. I’d be moving my money out of it.”

Gold, which is trading this day close to year’s high of US$455 an ounce, is going to be stable in 2005, possibly rising a bit.

Interest rates will have a minor increase. “I suppose a little bit could be significant, but it won't be enough to get people screaming.”

Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who retires early in 2006, will continue on the same course for 2005, “even if people are appealing to him to rethink his strategy,” Levin says. “I get the feeling people will be relieved to see him go.”

She gets a sense that people are going to be irritated by the actions of David Dodge, governor of the Bank of Canada and Greenspan's central banking counterpart. “People don’t understand what he’s doing.” Meantime, though, she sees the Canadian economy basically being the same in 2005 as 2004. “For the people struggling, they’ll probably continue to struggle. For the people doing well, they’ll probably continue to do well. I guess it’s good if it’s stable.” Last year, Levin foresaw that Bush and Prime Minister Paul Martin would be reelected, but she did say it would be a lot closer for them than people expected, which turned out to be prescient. In 2005, she says, Martin and the opposition parties will probably avoid going to the polls to test his minority government.

Right now, we’re ready to eat. And while we get to work on our salads, Levin brings us up to date on her career as a professional psychic, a long journey that began when she discovered as a child that she had a seer’s gift. Today, she charges $190 an hour for personal consultations and $3 a minute for phone consultations with a minimum of 30 minutes. (More details at deborahlevinpsychic.com.) And she is close to spreading her talents to a reality-based TV show, where her slightly other-worldly good looks would hardly be a deterrent to success.

Now, she’s just dispatched her beet and goat’s cheese salad and is working on Matisse’s moules et frites, which turn out to be a big plate of steamed mussels with rice in a tomato sauce and a spiral basket of shoe-string french fries. After our salad, we’re enjoying the risotto, which is bursting with scallop, shrimp and flavour.

We’ve had our annual luncheon earlier than usual because Levin is off soon to West Palm Beach to relax and give client readings. Many clients, more men among them these days, are “cleaning up their personal balance sheets,” she says. “A lot of people are downsizing — downsizing their houses, their portfolios. I’m hearing a lot of that.”

After such a hearty meal and with an eye on our growing waistland, Lunch Money should also think about downsizing. The bill this year at Matisse is slightly upsized, we reckon, from 2003. But at $108 all included, it’s right there in expense account territory and decent value for midtown Toronto. For her part, Deborah Levin has been a good sport again in trying to get beyond the restaurant buzz and peer into 2005. Next time, we’ll be doing our reading on 2006 and looking back at 2005 at Chez Levin.