On February 12, we will put the Year of the Rat behind us. In what is probably the most widely celebrated festival on the planet, the incoming Year of the Ox will most likely be celebrated more with a sense of relief that a truly traumatic year is finally past rather than toasting the virtues of the incoming Ox. In looking to the future, one needs to reflect on the past and most predictions of how these past 12 months would play out were pretty wide of the mark. As the British economist Roger B...