Apocalypse 2013: reasons to despair in the coming year.

• Author: Welch, Mait
• Position: Brief article

You don't have to be a pessimist to see woe around most every corner in 2013. After seven decades of mostly peaceful integration, Western Europe is fraying at the edges. The Arab world remains in turmoil. Iran faces a military showdown over nuclear weapons, the American president sends drones to assassinate people on his kill list, and unless something drastic happens between Election Day and December 31, a recession-battered United States will ring in the New Year by plunging off the "fiscal cliff"--a mix of preordained budget trims and widespread tax hikes that economists predict will send the economy into another nosedive.

A combination of poorly planned tax and spending policies that would shrink the gap between revenue and spending in a federal budget that ran more than $1 trillion in the red during each of Barack Obama's first four years in office, the fiscal cliff will...