Perhaps the biggest economic disappointment of 2011 was the failure of the Super Committee to address root causes of the federal deficit crisis. The Super Committee members and their puppeteers missed a pivotal opportunity to restore business confidence.

Perhaps more frustrating is the failure of leadership we’ve witnessed in the corporate suites of the global financial world. Despite being managed by the brightest minds in Europe, the major banks of France and other European countries are approaching insolvency due to an unfortunate gorging of European sovereign debt. If we want to discuss American incompetence, think of Lehman Brothers’ real estate group destroying that great firm, the smart guys at blue chip investment firms dramatically overpaying for Stuyvesant Town in NYC, and good ol’ Jon Corzine allegedly misappropriating $1.2 billion of his clients’ funds.

Perhaps it’s just the “group think” thing that leads to unsound investment decisions. Recall what John Maynard Keynes famously said: “A sound banker alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.