Every time this third rock from the sun completes a circuit of its host, everybody expects things to have changed. It is as if the world today is expected to be different from last week just because it is January. It is not, it is just the same.
I am starting the year with a quick multi-decade perspective exercise. This is UK-centric, but applies to most of the developed world. Modern times began in 1979/80, with the elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
Their early years were characterised by deep recession, high inflation and the start of monetarist economic policies.
Give or take a wobble here and there, bond yields and inflation have been falling ever since.
Economies have fluctuated, but not to any great degree. The problem was stability: there was too much of it and it inspired what was, with considerable hindsight, lunatic risk-taking.
Many of the alleged greatest brains since mankind first slithered out of the Primordial Soup declared that their genius policies had broken the economic cycle.
Without such a cycle there would be no recessions, no bad times, no return to boom and bust. And without these, there was no risk in borrowing and leverage as everyone would live happily ever after in Goldilocks-Land.
Sometimes I have a long memory for rubbish. I clearly remember the chief economist of one of the Wall Street goliaths, one of the most famous Dr Dooms of the previous decade, capitulating in early 2006 (about the same time as Bill Gross) and declaring that he believed he had been wrong.
He is still highly respected and works in academia, training others to be wrong. Everyone was agreed, the economy had never been so good. Eighteen months later and the entire western financial system was collapsing around us.
The relevance is that this hyper-confidence was the root cause of the debt that was built up at national, corporate and personal levels.
This is the debt that has to be paid down to get everything back on an even keel. The debt that hasn’t started to be paid back yet. The debt that is determining that every year looks much the same as every other one.
This is a financial marathon. I may be a happy curmudgeon, but marathons do not make enthralling viewing.
I stop at nothing in my admiration for Brendon Foster, who has the task of making each mile of tediousness sound even more exciting than the last one, plus the promise that the next mile will be even more of a thrill.
When all else fails, let’s have a chat about Paula Radcliffe’s navel.
2015 is no different to last week. The American economy will grow, Europe won’t and China will slow a bit. Markets will get excited by European QE and Japanese Abenomics. The dollar is rising and the euro is falling.
But all the time, debts are still going up and the song remains the same. Where 2015 could be different is if the oil price holds where it is (or falls even more). This is a global helicopter-full of dollars sent by the oil producers to the consumers.
Early evidence is that this money is already being spent; this is good as it starts the velocity side of the economic equation. In the financial and economic marathon, it is a big glug of electrolyte.
You may not have noticed, but this is election year. At the moment I can only see this as a risk: the 5 year gilt yield of 1.3 per cent does not seem adequate compensation for the risk of some of the governmental mutations that may hatch in May.
This is also the year in which the cost of borrowing is going to rise.
This is deserving of much greater space than I give it here, but I am going to float the idea that zero interest rates have become counterproductive: they have created a mind-set of minimal expectations and give no incentive to pay back debt.
I am not sure this view is yet widely, or even narrowly, shared in important places.
Jim Wood-Smith is head of research at Hawksmoor Investment Management. The views expressed above are his own.