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ECONOMY:

World's tallest skyscraper in Dubai has closed indefinitely.

More analysis predicting Japan, whose policies Bush and Obama are following, will lead the global depression.

"Weak sovereigns will buckle. The shocker will be Japan, our Weimar-in-waiting. This is the year when Tokyo finds it can no longer borrow at 1pc from a captive bond market, and when it must foot the bill for all those fiscal packages that seemed such a good idea at the time. Every auction of JGBs will be a news event as the public debt punches above 225pc of GDP. Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii will become as familiar as a rock star.

Once the dam breaks, debt service costs will tear the budget to pieces. The Bank of Japan will pull the emergency lever on QE. The country will flip from deflation to incipient hyperinflation. The yen will fall out of bed, outdoing China's yuan in the beggar-thy-neighbour race to the bottom. By then China too will be in a quandary. Wild credit growth can mask the weakness of its mercantilist export model for a while, but only at the price of an asset bubble. Beijing must hit the brakes this year, or store up serious trouble. It will make as big a hash of this as Western central banks did in 2007-2008."

Failure of the people to understand economics has allowed aristocrats to bring western civilization to its knees, and we show no signs of reversing course and embracing freedom to save ourselves before we collapse back into a new dark ages.

"In the end, the Euro's fate will be decided by strikes, street protest, and car bombs as the primacy of politics returns. I doubt that 2010 will see the denouement, but the mood music will be bad enough to knock the euro off its stilts.

The dollar rally will gather pace. America's economy – though sick – will shine within the even sicker OECD club. The British will need the shock of a gilts crisis to shatter their complacency. In time, the Dunkirk spirit will rise again. Mervyn King's pre-emptive QE and timely devaluation will bear fruit this year, sparing us the worst.

By mid to late 2010, we will have lanced the biggest boils of the global system. Only then, amid fear and investor revulsion, will we touch bottom. That will be the buying opportunity of our lives."

That's a bunch of wishful thinking at the end. We won't change direction until the people gather pitchforks and torches and hang the aristocrats from trees. The masses will never quit demanding more welfare, the aristocrats will never admit their sins, and they'll turn tanks on us to keep from admitting them. As much as I hope for one, I don't see a peaceful recovery for anybody. The two self-serving, anti-American parties in the US won't surrender power peacefully, and I doubt it will happen anywhere else either.

Remember, no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse.

"I know, from long experience, that many of you ask, like this recent one from mom,

“Do you know that you are the worst? Your writing stinks, your economics stink, I hate you and everything you do, and one can only wonder how it could get worse!” which leads me to the conclusion that many of you will write and ask, “How could it get worse than $1.6 trillion of deficit-spending, which means at least $1.6 trillion in new money created by the Federal Reserve, so that the federal government can spend $3.8 trillion, which is so much money that it is 27% of the whole freaking economy?”

“It’s easy!” I reply. Every year, the corrupt, slimy Congress, as is their habit of the last umpteen years, will pass a number of “emergency appropriations” throughout the year as they find that they are, as usual, “running a little short of cash,” and which usually totals almost $1.5 trillion more by themselves."

It can get worse, and it will. All I see are big-government Republicans and Democrats until the end of the world.

HEALTH CARE:

Just as I predicted, Republicans are running to the table to compromise on health care oppression. We're going to lose freedom over our health care, and Republicans who had benefited powerfully because Democrats refused to compromise on health care making it appear as if Republicans were different than Democrats, are going to show the people they're just as power-hungry as Democrats, loose all their political momentum and give Obama a bipartisan victory on health care oppression.

WAR:

US soldier waterboards his four year old daughter.

MISC:

Hooray for snow! Something finally shut down the federal government.