2012 - the year the world jumps off a cliff?

Here comes the obligatory New Year post - well, OK, like most things in my life a little too late.

There is again that dash of foolish optimism that I feel at the commencement of each year - which, as the weeks shamble along, duly muddies, then blanches and fades. And one goes about the chores with a heart that secretly (secretly to its owner) bides for another year to rally fresh hopes.

Yet this time it is different - and not in a good way. It is not just me that is in shambles  - but seemingly the whole world. There is a pall of uneasiness, a slippery fog in which we might, I fear, lose our way.In a big way. We are, civilizationally speaking, at crossroads of history -history that is the future. Just our luck that instead of clear thinkers that we need the world is run by dense elites. The fog is in their head. They have lead the world to  this crossroad and they will now take the highway to nowhere. They will reliably fail, the world over, as they always have -but this time the consequences will be history making and shaking.

It is not just me. Look at the year's first covers of these magazines:

2012 could be the year when the fools who brought us to the edge of the cliff jump off -and take us with them.