In the Balance: 2011 - Reaping the Whirlwind

Are we as perilously placed now as we were in the darkest days of 2008?

Lesley Curwen asks a former British finance minister, Alistair Darling, a former central banker and head of Britain's CBI, Richard Lambert, and a former US presidential adviser, Pippa Malmgren.

All of them were there at the eye of the 2008 storm, and none can find much end-of-year cheer this time around.

However their gloomy forecasts are perhaps to be taken with a pinch of salt, as our resident management consultant-turned-comedian, Colm O'Regan observes, most pundits have a habit of getting it horribly wrong.

How do you think we got into this financial mess in the first place?