After some extensive research into inter-dimensional travel, pony kind had made contact with humanity. Five groups of over 50 ponies each had traveled from the waygates on Equestria into Earth. While three of the elected "Equine-compounds" were erected in America, the two others found settlement in the UK and Russia for diversity in cultural research.
The political goal of both races were to have the ponies teach harmony to humanity, and help them to overlook the political, economic, and social differences that had caused such strife and hate between not only races and creeds, but cultures and personal choices; as the equine's themselves had done.
After years of profound political disunity as well as social, America has fallen into a depression that far exceeded the catastrophic "Great Depression" of the 1940's.
It has been four years since the waygates had been opened and the contact between the two races had been officially made. In that short of a time, have the Equestrians shown enough to the humans that they may pull together in this time of economic hard ship? Only time will tell.
(And by that, I mean in what ever mood I am; I will bring a nuclear winter, or I will give salvation... I haven't decided yet.)