Where was America and the world heading? The economic slowdown had been a surprise to most Americans. But business cycles come and go like the weather. The current economic slump had by 2003 lasted already three years. Would it last for the rest of the decade? There was a good chance that it would as deflationary pressures began to hit the global economy, but even if a new economic boom came would most Americans benefit? Would the rest of the planet benefit too? The odds were not good that most people on Earth would, without some higher sense of global economic justice. Also the ecology of the planet was in increasing danger and any sustainable economic recovery on the planet would depend ultimately on the health of the ecology. But how could anyone on Earth really understand the Earth's problems, if these problems were not discussed in global terms in an intelligent way in the earth's international media ?

We have journeyed through forty-five years of American and global history. We have seen many economic, technological, and cultural trends in the meantime. Let's examine them more closely now and see if we can determine what kind of scenarios might unfold in the future….