Atlantic writers survey the biggest stories on their beats See full coverage

To review the most important business stories of 2011 is confront the sorry reality that good news is, broadly speaking, dead.

Or, if not dead, then dormant. Glimmers of hope from the job market were overshadowed Europe's slow decent into continental cataclysm. Oil spiked and fell (again), the Federal Reserve fended off critics from left and right (again), and what stimulus it provided was more than offset by congressional dithering (again). Throw in a British hacking scandal, a Libyan revolution, and an international protest against income inequality, and you've got the makings of yet another annus quasi-horribilis for business and economics.