Well, 2012 is here. Looking around, my sense is that most people expect it to be a year about like 2011: Depressing, but not disastrous. We’ll muddle through, with some things getting better, and some things getting worse, but, overall, with no really dramatic change.

Well, maybe. But at the risk of being a New Year’s downer, that’s probably a best-case scenario. Though we might muddle through, there are a lot of potential game-wreckers out there. Let’s look at a few.