Never mind about the next 100 years. Let's try to foretell the next 7 years or so.
By the way, Dr. Ravindra Batra, an academic at SMU once said in early 1999:-
Well, I have observed a curious pattern since 1929 and that is that in the final year of each decade, there has been a nightmare somewhere on Earth that had consequences for the entire next decade.
The 1929 Stock market crash had economic repercussions that lasted for the next decade.
Then in 1939 WW II started. That affected almost the entire decade.
And in 1949 the Chinese revolution started a nightmare in China that dragged the U.S. into a cold war and into many regional conflicts like the Korean War.
In 1959 the Cuban revolution took place. That was a very small country, but remember the U.S. and Soviet Union almost had a nuclear war over Cuba. With the Cuban revolution, the U.S. became determined to stop the spread of Communism which was part of the reason for getting involved in Vietnam.
And by 1969 the rate of inflation really began to accelerate, such that it reached double digits in the 1970's.
In 1979 we had the Iranian revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a major sea change in U.S. monetary and economic policy.
Then in 1989 we had the fall of the Berlin Wall, which signified the global demise of communism.
And now, in 1999, another nightmare is about to occur.
Never mind about what might happen in the next 100 years. Let us be a bit modest and just think of the next 7 to 17 years from now,
So far we have had seen a morbid fear of the horrendous consequences of Y2K (which never materialized), the humiliation of America by Al-Qaeda on "911", the stock market crash, and now a war against Iraq looms over the horizon and the North Koreans are acting tough again. I wonder what the next 6 to 7 years will bring? Any ideas? And what might happen in the decade following 2009? |
