Last week the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the most ambitious energy and global warming legislation ever debated in Congress.  That is very good news and a good first step.  Of course, since Congress has never been anything close to providing leadership in the areas of alternative energy and climate change, the comparison to past non-action doesn’t mean much.

The other action last week that was a good first step was the announcement by President Obama that a deal had been made with auto manufacturers to impose new mileage and emissions standards for all cars and truck sold in the …

It is about time!   The first steps that President Obama took recently to open up the U.S. policy towards Cuba are long overdue.  It has been clear to me for the past 15 years that the Federal Government’s policy on Cuba, instituted 50 years ago is a worn out relic of the Cold War era.

In the second half of the 20^th century, at least until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Americans were raised and educated that the bad guys were communists and that these communists threatened the way of life of the country and all …

It is clear that one of the reasons that Barack Obama won the Presidency is his campaign utilized the Internet in all aspects and in new ways.  The Obama campaign of 2008 introduced and defined success with this latest transformative medium.  The campaign’s use of all aspects of interactivity will be the definition and measurement of success for the next 8-16 years.

Now that Obama is President and comes into office with a mandate for change in a time of incredible challenges it will be interesting to see how the campaign mastery of the Internet is deployed to the process of …

In my last column I wrote that humanity is in transition from one Age to another and that the global financial collapse is a painful part of that transition.  This occurs during any major historical transition period.  In addition I wrote:

“There are four words that keep coming back to me as I view the landscape of what lies ahead in 2009 and beyond.  They are contraction, cleansing, reorganization and transformation.  It is these four words to keep in mind as you read the forecasts here and look around you”

I repeat that because most of the economic predictions below …