The Current Discussion: The mood at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year was decidedly gloomy, which seems a fair reflection of economic conditions. Let's look forward: tell us what the bright spots might be in the world economy this time next year.

Here are the bright spots that I can see a year from now:

1. The Obama plan will have brought back confidence to the job market and the base economic activity will have improved, in the U.S. and elsewhere.
2. China will have turned to spending more and with its large population, consumer-led demand growth will offset the weakness in large capital expenditures.
3. A psychological return to normalcy will have occurred, with people shedding their fears as they have done with the crash of '87, the 9/11 impact and many more such disasters. People forget, as they have in the past.
4. While the long term financial health of the banking system will take a while to improve, some of the banks will take the lead in supporting consumer credit and corporate lending to ease the pressure of the crunch.

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The Current Discussion: Israel's real "existential question" is whether or not to disenfranchise its Arab minority, says Fareed Zakaria in his column this week. Is he right?

The sad aspect of people like Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the Yisrael Beytenu party that controls a crucial block of seats in the Israeli Knesset, is that they have forgotten history. The question of expelling Israeli citizens who are Arabs should not even be considered - especially because it is a grim reminder of the laws and actions of Nazi Germany. While the idea may not be as harsh as the Nazi Nuremberg laws of 1936, the moral equivalent is exactly the same that citizens who have not broken the law are being expelled merely because of their ethnicity and perhaps their religion.

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