Welcome to the New Century

As the 2000s begin, there is a brief scare that this will expose errors in old software code, which expect all dates to start with the digit '1,' but nothing happens.  America settles into a happy decade of growing prosperity.

New internet companies pop up every other week, and soon it seems that every new stock offering is of the 'dot-com' variety. The internet address of companies in the new digital age usually ends in the suffix '.com.' 

Stock offerings for these new companies are relentlessly hyped by a new breed of promoters. Prices sometimes double, or ever triple, on the first day, goosed by wild sales projections for products that often don't yet exist. 
Nasdaq Dot-com Bubble, 2000

  Fantasy.Com
Americans easily fall for the hype, as they can't make heads or tails out of all the new 'tech' talk suddenly flooding their world. They're happy to follow the advice of financial pundits. Besides, new tech stocks seem guaranteed to pop ... until the bottom drops out, in early spring. Then, many simply disappear, leaving a much more concentrated market (lower right).

9/11 Trade Towers attack, 2001 map

  Second Day of Infamy
The main event of the decade comes when terrorists deliberately fly commercial airliners into the World Trade towers in New York, reducing them to toxic rubble. This is the fevered work of former-Saudi-rich-boy Osama bin Laden, who hopes the attack will throw the US into a tizzy, which it does. Osama's plan is to provoke America into a futile, and self-destructive attempt to retaliate against an enemy it can't even locate. He very nearly succeeds.


Shock and Awe, Iraq War, 2003 map

  How DARE They?
President George W. Bush instantly knows what he has to do. Attack Iraq. No matter that the terrorist pilots were from Saudi Arabia. Bush is eager to match the glory his father earned fighting Iraq in the 1990s, before inexplicable stopping short of the finish line, and leaving Saddam Hussein alive. Bush pulls out all the stops to find dubious evidence that Iraq is working to produce 'weapons of mass destruction.' He launches a ferocious attack on Iraq, with virtually no world support. He wins his war.