If you remember, it was only a year ago that America was millennium-mad and drunk on the success of the dot-com.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com had just been named Time magazine's person of the year. Wealthy technology executives were puzzling over whether to greet the new year in Fiji or the Antarctic. Hoteliers around the world were icing champagne and chilling caviar, and the air was thick with predictions about the century and the first decade.
Trend-meisters and journalists are revisiting their forecasts for 2001 as the new year approaches, but this time a more cautious atmosphere prevails. Taken together, the predictions in the Trends Journal's winter 2001 issue are chilling.
"These are the most dire predictions we've ever come out with," said Gerald Celente, editor and publisher of the journal, published by Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y. "The reason we did it is that we want people to understand they have to undertake recession-proofing strategies. . . . I'm not a gloom-and-doomer, but we felt it would be irresponsible for us not to let people know there's a storm on the horizon."
Here's what the journal says may be in store for Americans:
A wave of anti-Americanism will sweep the world in coming years, and American pop culture, with its overtones of sex, consumerism and violence, will be regarded in other countries as "numbing and dangerous."
A pre-recessionary period will begin next year, brought about by a market downturn and "the uncertainty of a contentious and polarizing presidency."
Politicians and the public will reconsider the failed war on drugs.
Immigration will be a hot issue, as the economy and the job market slow worldwide.
America's leadership role will be jeopardized by a "climate of conformity," in which opinions are shaped by a homogenous media, financial markets with vested interests and a lack of open, unbiased debate on national issues.
A sinking economy will force Americans away from materialism, in many cases, into lifestyles of "involuntary simplicity."
Russia will begin to retreat from its failed experiment in democracy and return to a state-run economy.
The economic downturn will result in companies slashing work forces still stressed by layoffs that began in the 1990s.
