[Aurel]

I voted globalization, IP and nanotechnology.
From where I am (University research lab on nanotech applied to energy storage and conversion), I see that the most common business model adopted by researchers and satrtups is the following:

1- Do something nano, whatever it is, because that is where govt. and venture capital funding is. Probably the next bubble after IT and housing bubbles. I`ll try to cash in on that one.

2- Generate patents, proofs of conceot.

3- Do not worry about production of anything, sell the patents to a bigger company that will figure out how to make money by producing the goods in a low manufacturing cost country.

The greenisation also contributes to globalization in that it makes manufacturing in the US more costly to respect the environment. China does not (yet) bother with those consideration. Heck, they do not even worry about losing a few hundred miners a year...

As long as the US retains the brains and that IP is protected and enforced, this model may work...but the the trend seems to be that IP can be generated or copied in Asia as well, looking at the numbers of scientists and engineers they are forming compared to here.

Maybe Bush already figured all that out, and understands that the only manufacturing sector that can survive in the US is the weapons industry, since he is creating a vast consumer market by pushing for world War III starting in the middle east...

Aurel