Next year is not going to be better, and one might just stop there. Whatever temporary economic fixes are applied to the eurozone, American deficits and unemployment, the overheated Chinese real estate market, petering Indian reforms or stalling Brazilian growth, the downward slide will continue. This is because all are symptoms of a structural global economic dislocation that is becoming increasingly disorderly. Yet the second half of this prediction is that politics may be deceptively calm in 2012 – calm before the storm.
今年的情況好不到哪兒去,人們可能不應抱有過高期待。對於歐元區、美國赤字和失業問題、中國過熱的房地產市場、逐漸「熄火」的印度改革,或是陷入停滯的巴西經濟成長而言,無論在經濟上採取什麼樣的權宜之計,下行趨勢都將繼續。這是因爲所有這一切都是全球經濟結構性錯位的徵兆,這種錯位正變得越來越混亂和無序。然而,本篇預測的第二個部分是:2012年的全球政壇或將呈現一片虛假的平靜——這是暴風雨前的寧靜。