Handicapping 2012

... would seem to be a fool's errand. Consider these facts:

• We're running $1.5T deficits - far higher than anything we've ever done before.


• The Fed is printing $600B a year of unbacked dollars to cover these deficits, something they've never done before.


• Gold and oil are hitting new highs with regularity.


• The EU is facing an existential crisis because of debt and it looks now like both Greece and Portugal will have to restucture their debts, wiping out tens of billions of dollars of bonds held by private, European banks.


• The full effects of the Japanese earthquake have yet to be felt as the Japanese are borrowing like never before in an environment where their total debt is higher than ever before.

If there are large, ahistoric forces at work in the world and large, important parts of the world are unstable, why would you think that historical analyses of presidential races would apply?

It's a better bet that at least one major event will occur in the next 12 months that will have a dramatic affect on our lives than it is that some pundit can use statistics from a relatively stable previous few decades to predict the next presidential election.