In today's Globe & Mail, there's an interesting perspective on the "Is Japan's 'lost decade' a window to the future?" by Marcus Gee, at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081121.wrjapan22/BNStory/Business/ .  This compares the current situation and economic history in Japan, as compared to the current economic situation in the United Stated. [Kent's comment: The peak of a bubble is a perilous state to be in. Why do we use that as the criterion for how we want things to be, so that every pull-back from an unrealistic state is considered something very bad? Japan may indeed be in bad shape, but I would like to look at it further as giving some indications of how a low-growth economy with an aged population gets along successfully. Ecologically, that might be exactly what we need, to be successful.]

In that article, Niall Ferguson is referenced.  Ferguson recently spoke at the Grano Speaker Series  in Toronto.  A web video replay (in three parts) starts at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081121.video1/VideoStory/VideoLineup/Business .

I had previously blogged about listening to a LongNow Seminar about Long Term Thinking with Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz at http://daviding.wordpress.com/2008/08/09/niall-ferguson-peter-schwartz-historian-vs-futurist-on-human-progress-longnow-foundation/ .