Regardless of a gloomy situation and of everything bad that may/could/can/will happen, one has to strive to be happy, resolutely happy, hopelessly happy, I therefore wish to wish you (no pun intended) a Happy New Year.
I'll put that apart and in the official languages of our little group:
This being said, when thinking of the tone with which present one's New Year Greetings, I have to say the World's state of affairs still looks pretty bad. The economy gives no hint it will not crash nastily, being all the more a deplorable event that this so-called crisis is not an uncontrollable jolt of a complex system but a deliberate attack from the banksters on the people, dragging in its wake all that ugly that comes from money, from spoliation of society to the worst conceivable crimes.
Complex systems do have genuine uncontrollable jolts of their own, and in the attempt of securing a better control of the planet's wealth and of the mass of people going after their business, the shock doctrine may lead us to a Disaster Capitalism that .
"Man is a creature who can get used to anything, and I believe that is the very best way of defining him." (Записки из Мёртвого дома)