[StainlessSteelCynic]

There's been some small indication from GDW that the severely depressed world economy that was the background for Merc: 2000, was the beginning of the Greater Depression background to the Dark Conspiracy setting.
It seems at first glance, a tenuous link but there was one adventure in Challenge magazine that involved your M2k PCs investigating a corporation that is a Dark Minion controlled organization.

It was written by Craig Sheeley and is titled "Things Got Weirder..."
It can be found in Challenge 62, page 12. It's listed as a "Merc: 2000/Dark Conspiracy combined scenario". Sheeley was involved with a few products for the T2k line, notably the East European Sourcebook and perhaps less notably, the adventure scenario City of Angels.

So, if you wanted to, you could have the M2k setting slowly morph into the Dark Conspiracy setting - which is pretty much what I did with my first DarkCon campaign (I let the Players use their M2k characters because I didn't want them to realise too soon what was happening - and this was before I knew of Challenge magazine!). Or you could use the DarkCon economic and social setting, (remove the Dark Minion elements) to further develop a more economically depressed, more corporate dominated world background for M2k.

P.S. I believe it was Swaghauler who was one to remind me about this combined scenario so all credit to and a big thumbs up to him!