We hear from the media about the the top stories of the year. But what does the Bain Current Events group think? Here is my top three:
1) The meltdown at Fukushima
2) The debt ceiling debate and the US downgrade
3) The rise of Occupy Wall Street
Please comment if you agree or disagree. What was your top stories of 2011?
Those 3 are as good as any. You could lump in natural disasters in Iceland (volcano), Africa (drought), the upper and lower mid-West (flooding and tornados) with tsunami and earthquakes.
ReplyDeleteThe Arab Spring was, and is, a bigger story than the Occupy movement.
And our debt crisis, while politically hot, had less impact than the loss of the Greek and Italian heads of state.
Norm is correct that the three stories each are only small parts of a bigger story. The earthquake and tsumani that caused the Fukushima meltdown are just some of the natural disasters of 2011. However, Fukushima has added the frightening dimension of how vulnerable our nuclear power plants are.
ReplyDeleteThe debt ceiling debate was part of the greater worldwide financial crisis. But it was also the epitome of government dysfunction. S&P lowered our credit rating because of the lack of confidence in our government to solve our debt problems.
Finally, the Occupy movement is derived from the Arab Spring, which was partly instigate by the WikiLeaks documents from Bradley Manning, whose trail is now underway.