Dear ATCA Colleagues; dear IntentBloggers

[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]

Happy New Year to you and to your family! Here is the 2007 full analysis of global risks and opportunities encompassing: spiritual awakening and consumer activism; countering climate chaos; radical poverty and micro-finance; geo-politics, organised crime and extremism; new technologies; pandemics; demographic skews; and financial markets.

Let us wish this is a highly purposeful year for all of us and may we continue to be guided wisely towards the fulfilment of our nobler intentions. Having arrived back in Europe from India, we must confess that it has been an extremely rewarding trip at a food-for-the-spirit level. India is metamorphosing into an economic and geo-political giant and and no where is this more palpable than in New Delhi, her capital city.

.000 Spiritual and environmental awakening at an individual level and consumer activism at a group level is going to become much more robust in 2007 as people continue to connect with each other around the world in their billions and have more information at their finger-tips to know the truth about events and personalities through blogging and other personalised expression outlets based on independent one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many text, audio and video messaging services as well as newscast solutions. The internet with powerful search engines, roaming mobile telephony and trans-national independent satellite television stations may end up delivering much more by way of protecting human rights, raising awareness amongst the masses, promoting democracy and the values of liberty, equality and fraternity, in comparison to the global wars fought to achieve just that. The more that humanity communicates and connects, the more it bonds to move beyond physical and intellectual differences towards realising the collective universal consciousness or the Omega Point in the immortal words of Teilhard de Chardin. As global inter-faith dialogue develops, greater connectivity, introspection and inner progress is likely to yield further progress in forgiveness, tolerance, compassion and mercy towards fellow sentient beings, the environment and the alternative points of view in the medium to long term.

.001 Reports of climate chaos and environmental degradation are going to continue to proliferate and watch out for the greening of the corporate world, as it tries to reinvent itself in the face of pressure from its major shareholders and the large pension funds' awakened sense of fiduciary next generation responsibility. Hard nosed short term pure-profits-driven capitalism is now out of fashion and instead the renaissance themes for 2007 and beyond are going to be sustainability, longevity, going green, philanthropy, social entrepreneurship and building a better world together for generations to come, with many minor and some major hiccups along the way. Governments will also wish to be seen to be getting greener in the area of clean energy production, distribution and consumption as well as inventive policies on taxation and resource allocation. Locally generated clean energy solutions will be espoused in favour of centrally planned traditional energy solutions by local, regional and national players. The rise of hydrogen, solar, wind and alternative clean fuels is inevitable and necessary to balance the over-dependence on unclean fuels from an energy security perspective as well as the huge environmental degradation caused by industrial pollution. Nuclear technology is likely to be touted and embraced as a solution -- once again -- but it may not live up to expectations as the true cost and ten-to-fifteen year output delay of new nuclear programmes is determined including the cost of processing the long life-span radioactive waste over the full cycle. The parallel developments are going to be towards the proliferation of waste recycling solutions and sustainable technologies on the one hand and eco-friendly infrastructure a la "The Dongtan eco-city" project near Pudong-Shanghai, on the other. Water shortages caused by droughts and floods will continue to show a steady rise. The need for the delivery of locally refined water through non-energy-intensive solutions is likely to increase. This presents a great opportunity for innovation. Expect more damaging hurricanes and typhoons in 2007 and a better quality of government response than at the time of Katrina.

.002 Slums and sub-standard living conditions for the mass of humanity gravitating towards urban metropolitan areas is going to continue to skew growth and multi-nationals will announce a number of inverted pyramid solutions taking lessons from players in fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs). They may even address the problem of environmentally unfriendly packaging which is utilised to promote micro-capitalism's latest assorted set of shampoos, toothpastes, condiments and processed edibles. The growth of micro-finance solutions is going to become ubiquitous as an elegant mechanism for offering small loans for self-employment and small scale entrepreneurship finance, without collateral. Macro development has to be matched by micro development in order to ensure stability and balance in growth. We can also look -- with some trepidation -- towards the growth of rip-off credit financing schemes in the name of loans to alleviate poverty. There are slum dwellers in so many developing countries, who are being offered credit cards and credit worthiness numbers so that they can purchase electrical goods and vehicles etc without having any real capacity to pay back or service the loan debt.

.003 No longer relegated to the back seat, the United Nations is going to be seen as an important platform in dealing with the turmoil in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is likely to continue with attendant consequences for the US and UK, in particular, as well as various countries in the Middle East and South Asia, especially Saudi Arabia and Iran on the one hand and Pakistan on the other. The Shia-Sunni divide is fracturing Islamism with extremely destabilising consequences for Iraq and its attendant fallout for the world. The Israel-Palestine and Iran nuclear proliferation challenges are going to come into sharper relief. The relationships between China and the Middle East plus Africa on the one hand and Latin America on the other are going to get stronger. China and the US as well as China and Japan are going to continue to have a rising number of differences but the economic ties will remain robust. The depth and breadth of the socio-economic and geo-political relationships between the US, EU countries and Japan with India are going to strengthen further. China and India will continue to strengthen their collaboration on joint energy initiatives. Russia will continue to flex its energy muscle and strengthen bridges with China and India -- expect the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) to have even more momentum. The interlinked hand-maidens of organised crime, recruitment of radicals and extremists -- drug production and trafficking, counterfeit goods, illegal immigration, child pornography, small and sophisticated weapons trade, trade in forbidden chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear material etc -- are going to show significant signs of presence and proliferation in the high growth developing countries, their dependents and the established G8, with alleged and real bases in failed states or quasi-isolated countries. Some of the hitherto small but stable developing countries will also suffer from varying degrees of destabilising pressures as a result of the hand-maidens' operations.

.004 The new technologies of the 21st century are going to continue to proliferate and to cause disruptive innovation, with their attendant challenges. Expect more opposition to genetically modified food and a push towards organic food and fair trade products in super markets. Nanotechnology based devices and materials are going to be even more ubiquitous from personal entertainment devices to "special properties" clothes that perform better than cotton, silk, wool or any of the traditional natural fibres in surpassing their key benefits. Robots are going to make their foray into domestic automated appliances and also at some airport lounges and traffic monitoring. Smarter mobile telephones, PDAs and computers that can anticipate your next logical requirement will become common place and fulfil multiple functions. The need for a high quality camera, dictaphone, mobile telephone, music player, video player, photographs viewer, child monitor, translator is going to be increasingly integrated into the same device.

.005 A trans-national pandemic or health scare is expected at some stage in 2007 on a small, medium or large scale exacerbated by international travel. This may cause the aviation industry to suffer significant set backs on the passenger side and increase its cargo side and logistics operations. It could be the beginnings of the Avian flu or some other mutated strain of well known diseases like tuberculosis.

.006 Demographic skews in terms of aging populations in Western Europe and America will continue to impact immigration patterns and more Eastern Europeans and Asians are expected in the EU and more Latin Americans and Asians are expected in NAFTA regardless of regulation and political posturing. Asia will continue to be a magnet of the world as geo-political and socio-economic West-centric hegemony of the late 20th century shifts towards the Asia-Pacific in the 21st, with South Asia performing a more and more significant balancing act and lead partnership role. North South inter-dependence in favour of the South is also going to increase partially because of demographic skews and the need to maintain uninterrupted services and product supplies for the wealthier and elderly North.

.007 The interlinked global financial and capital markets plus large hedge funds are going to continue to feed vast flows of speculative capital into short-term investments causing some of yesterday's bubbles to burst and some new bubbles to come alive. Expect a number of hedge funds to collapse as a result of bubble bursts and associated higher volatilities. Expect the US Dollar to decline further in 2007 and also the EU countries and Japan to suffer the consequences in terms of damaged export capability as their currencies rise. Many commodities including oil and copper will struggle to maintain their high prices on the world markets. Gold may prove to be an exception depending on the Dollar's speed of decline. The Dollar decline may also derail economic growth in the US if interest rates have to be raised even further by the Federal Reserve. If there is a significant revaluation of the Yuan in 2007, it would seriously dent the China growth rate which is more production and supply skewed rather than consumption and demand based. Long term foreign direct investment into high GDP growth countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) will continue to accelerate and in the case of the US, it may stabilise or decline. The US slow down could spark a major retreat in global financial markets. India's growth rate is likely to exceed China's in 2007 for the first time in decades.

Having given you our two pennies worth, we are eager to learn about your thoughts, observations and views for 2007! Look forward to keeping in touch...

With all good wishes and love for the New Year!

DK with family

For and on behalf of DK Matai, Chairman, Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance (ATCA)

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