Amazing economic fact:

"In the last 25 years, we've had only 3 down quarters." - Former Secretary of State George Schultz,in an interview on Bloomberg, promoting his new book "Putting Our House in Order: A Guide to Social Security and Health Care Reform."

We sure don't hear messages like this often enough. Our economy has been in decline only 3% of the time over the last quarter century. I'd certainly say that I hear bear arguments or outright doom and gloom way more than 3% of the time.

And while the current view of our economic future may be dominated by the current financial crisis, there's still every reason to believe that global growth, opening economies, and IT and communication revolutions will continue to propel the world and US ecomies upward, as best outlined by Peter Schwartz in the classic Wired article The Long Boom.