With the possible exception of the week or two before New Year's Day, most of us waste very little time looking back at where we've been.

What, we ask ourselves, would be the point? It's too late to do anything about it.

And that may be true for many of the more trivial things we might see back there. But that is far less true for something as broadly sweeping as what is happening to the U.S. economy right now.

You see, we are living in momentous times, fighting for a clear view of where we're going even as the ground is shifting beneath our feet.

I've told you this before. The economy is changing.

That change is much more profound than the simple matter of a preponderance of very small businesses.

It also has to do with the way we do business, and the way those business methods interact with the new tools at our disposal, and how all of that has created new forms and new rules to replace the 20th century paradigms that have been disintegrating before our unbelieving eyes.

It pays to look back, to see just which excesses and missteps have brought us to this place. We wouldn't want to put ourselves through all this again, would we?

But it will pay even greater dividends to look back at the quiet revolution that has been taking place and that will provided us with a new economy, waiting in the wings, ready to rise from the ashes of the old.

What nobody seems to realize yet is that microbusinesses will be center stage.

Are you ready? Cue the spotlight.