I've witnessed 3 countries where people saw the storm approaching. They reacted, first by denying. Then when they recognized as inevitable, they calculated that the time it would take for IT to correct were a matter of less than a year.
BRAZIL 1982: I told 4 years, as the bare minimum. People to whom I articulated that were and total desbelief and got even angry at my realistic approach. It took 12 years.
NIGERIA: 1983 I didn't tell. My take was, it wouldn't go back to where it was. 22 years hence, not only did not return to where it was, it got worse and there's no end in sight.
INDONESIA: 1997 The third one I used the same yeard stick of the first and said: 12 years. It's been 8 with 4 years to, I am not seeing it being able to make it.
US 2005: the only outcome is they will do a UK. Return to its 'natural size.'
“The geographical size, population, and natural resources of the British Isles would suggest that it ought to possess 3 or 4% of the world’s wealth and power, all other things being equal; but it is precisely because all other things are never equal that a peculiar set of circumstances permitted the British Isles to expand to possess, say 25% of the world’s wealth and power in its prime; and since those favorable circumstances have disappeared, all that it has being doing is returning down to its more ‘natural’ size. In the same way, it may be argued that the geographical extent, population, and natural resources of the U.S. suggest that it ought to possess perhaps 16 or 19% of the world’s wealth and power, but because of historical and technical circumstances favourable to it, that share rose to 40% or more by 1945; and what we are witnessing at the moment is the early decades of the ebbing away from that extraordinarily high figure to a more ‘natural’ share.” Kennedy Paul, (1988), The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Fontana Press, London. >> |
