Trends to watch in ’07

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MARK AUSTIN THOMAS: We’re beginning a new year. What will the new trends be? From North Carolina Public Radio, Janet Babin reports on one company’s answer to that question.

JANET BABIN: What will we be doing in 2007? The Trends Research Institute has identified seven developments that should pick up steam this year.

Top on the list: medical tourism. We will increasingly travel abroad for surgery, and we’ll continue to use the Internet to meet up with like minds.

Gerald Celente with the Institute calls it techno-tribalism:

GERALD CELENTE: Positive, negative, good or bad, more people are going to unite their voices over the Internet in forming these techno tribes in ways we’ve never seen before.

One darker trend: systemic recession.

Celente says our collective debt load will start to catch up with us this year and trigger an economic downturn. He says it’s likely to surface at the kitchen table before reaching the boardroom.

I’m Janet Babin for Marketplace.