People have believed that the world was going to end at just about the turn of every century.  Remember the year 2000??? and Y2K? That turned out to be a load of shit lol..
I think our "leaders" love this kind of fear mongering. As long as you are afraid you will be obedient as they offer you their "protection".
All this end of the world shit is coming from people who have too much time on their hands, and who don't have fun things to do like ski, party and dont have girlfriends.  If the world really ended on 2012 it would be self fulfilling prophecy as a result of those loony goons I just mentioned.
Seriously so many people are such tool bags. They jump on any trendy new thing that pops up.  I say fuck 2012 and fuck the end of the world. The only way its happening is if greedy assholes continue ruling and tool bags and scrubs continue to put them into office.
 As far as our economic problems, you have to realize that we are starting to pay for years of living a life we can't afford.  Part of the reason all this happened to our economy is that financial companies were giving out loans to people who could not really afford to pay them back. Don't believe it? ask anyone involved in the mortgage industry in those years. The companies didn't do sufficient income verifications and that is why we have so many foreclosed homes. I am not an expert on economics by any means..but when you realize that we are spending more money as a country than we actually have, something is seriously wrong. Sometimes spending on credit makes sense as it can bring a profit later..but whats our national debt at now? In the trillions..
Now the government is punishing all those people who actually saved and lived within their means. They are doing this by devaluing the dollar. They are doing this by using money..which comes from us and our parents to basically save companies and their flawed methods of business. Now if this will permanently save the economy then I agree with it. But if its just a temporary delay of the inevitable crash then its not a good idea at all.
Plus notice that all of this economic stimulation is coming without much action from Congress.  That is not how our country is supposed to run.
So what are we going to do? [sarcasm> we are gonna save our economy by throwing another trillion into these falling financial giants..then we are gonna go to war with a couple more countries..i.e. iran and get into Cold War II .] Basically we are going to keep spending and borrowing until our money is worthless and we are bankrupt.
So is it really that surprising that we are in trouble? Well to me it was, but not to people who understood economics and were saying this for years now.
What can you do about it?  I honestly don't know. I don't believe that Obama or McCain will really change anything. Go look up John McCain and bomb Iran song on Youtube to see his good intentions.
10,000 years in Iraq:
 He's a real man of peace lol.  I can see that Obama might be the lesser of two evils. The thing is, everytime I hear him answer questions he is always skirting around the point or changing his mind later.  I still don't understand what his policy on Iraq is. There was one candidate I would have voted for, but he is no longer in the race as he lost in the primaries. So I say Don't Vote 2008
So chill out and have a good time. Ski season is right around the corner.