Attempts at austerity and deleveraging in Europe have converted an economic problem into a political dilemma, with leftist governments rising against Germany's austerity-laced rescue packages. Germany now faces a tough economic decision that will involve choosing between a breakup of the current euro system and a movement toward a common fiscal policy in Europe.

The International Monetary Fund should avoid current proposals to allow countries exceptionally large access to fund credit on a precautionary basis.

Can the current post-Bretton Woods international monetary system prevent a return to the beggar-thy-neighbor policies and competitive devaluations that so harmed international prosperity in the 1930s? What are the system's flaws? Can they be corrected, and if so, how? An expert panel will address these and related issues.

Despite frequent, dire warnings about the unsustainability of government budget deficits in the United States, Europe and Japan, investors are lining up to lend to some governments at very low interest rates.

China's new leadership is threatening to stay content with slower economic growth, and the country's manufacturing, housing, and export sectors are experiencing problems. Nonetheless, China has an opportunity to influence economic growth in 2012 through stimulus measures to its own economy.

With the bursting of the US housing market bubble in 2007-08, praise for Alan Greenspan soon turned into almost universal condemnation. It is all too likely that a similar fate awaits Jean-Claude Trichet as the euro unravels over the next year or two.

After many years of false starts, the Japanese economy may finally be set to boom—or at least to enter a period of sustained growth with a sharply rising stock market.

Judging by the financial market's renewed unease about Italy and Spain over the past week it would seem that all that the European Central Bank's €1 trillion liquidity injection in the European banking system bought was around four months of relative market calm.