ECONOMICS
Imagine—
- The U.S. economy suffers a sustained downturn following a dramatic stock market crash.
- China and/or India fail to sustain high growth rates.
- Chemical etching for integrated circuits yields dramatically cheaper and more powerful computation.
- Hybrid fuels greatly lower energy costs, bringing the price of oil to record lows.
- Green tariffs are widely used by the developed states in order to protect the global environment, including punishment for the “environmental rogue state,” the United States.
- Japan fails in the structural reform of its financial institutions and triggers an Asian currency collapse.
- An antiglobalization movement, the New Luddites, emerges using laptop computers, websites, and sophisticated encryption to conduct a worldwide campaign of anarchy.
- Exports surge to 50 percent of global product.
- Global energy supplies are disrupted in a major way.
- Major Asian countries establish an Asian Monetary Fund and/or an Asian Trade Organization, triggering a European reply in kind and undermining the IMF and the WTO.
- Owing to escalating trade disputes, the U.S./European alliance collapses.
- The euro becomes an alternative reserve currency with the dollar.