The World Won't be Aging Gracefully. Just the Opposite.

The world is in crisis. A financial crash and a deepening recession are afflicting rich and poor countries alike. The threat of weapons of mass destruction looms ever larger. A bipartisan congressional panel announced last month that the odds of a nuclear or biological terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the year 2014 are better than 50-50. It looks as though we'll be grappling with these economic and geopolitical challenges well into the 2010s.

But if you think that things couldn't get any worse, wait till the 2020s. The economic and geopolitical climate could become even more threatening by then -- and this time the reason will be demographics.

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