and called for withdrawal to the region. thanks for joining us. i'm candy crowley. later i'll anchor where candidates are offering closing arguments in their own words. web analysis, exclusives and much more at our website, cnn.com. up next, fareed zakaria gps. this is gps global public square. welcome to you in the u.s. and around the world. i want to wish awe happy new year. we have a terrific show for you on this new year. what better to do on the first day of 2012 than look at the entire year ahead. what will it bring in international affairs, economics and much more. a great panel of prognosticators who look into their crystal balls for us. next we look farther ahead in the future with a brilliant

harvard physicist. a look at the way your mind works and doesn't. fascinating conversation with nobel prize winner daniel kahneman. a big birthday but an awkward time to throw a big birthday bash. i'll explain. first my take. it's the start of the new year and we will do predictions on this show. i thought i'd try my own hand at some before asking others to risk their reputations. and in the spirit of keeping myself honest, i'm going to look back at what i said and wrote in "time" magazine at the start of last year and see how i did. it's always risky to stick your neck out and humbling to look at your predictions but here goes. the only indulgence i allow myself is to start with areas i did well. i said i thought china would moderate its foreign policy behavior recognizing its assertiveness and arrogance over the last year had caused jitters throughout asia. i think that happened. i said the taliban's momentum

would be broken in afghanistan. it has somewhat. i said the drawdown of american troops in iraq would take place and would not cause great regional crisis or instability. all of that seemed to play out pretty much as i predicted. i said iran would continue to be checked by a large group of regional and global powers but there would be no american or israeli strike. so far so good. now, my misses. i said that europe would survive. it has taken europeans much time and many crisis to come to the realization they will have to bail out their spend thrift and unlucky partners in greece, ireland, perhaps portugal, spain as well. germany can afford the bill. well, europe has survived but the situation did not resolve itself nearly so easily as i thought it would. my biggest miss was probably the u.s. economy which i thought would recover more vigorously than it did. what do i think this year? i'm going to double down on my

bets. i might have the timing wrong but the substance right. europe will deal with its problems, not in a clean dramatic way, not the way i thought, various complex mechanisms that will involve european central bank, some kind of bond insurance. i remain convinced germany will not let europe fall apart. if things get too dangerous germany will write the checks. it's trying to get the best deal it can, most reforms from countries like greece and italy before it does write the checks. as for america, i'm still bullish. i think american economy continues to have great strength, consumers have rebuilt balance sheets, savings rate from 0 to 3%. corporations are flush with cash. yes, washington remains dysfunctional. but remember there's a new dynamic at work even there. if congress does nothing,

something it does very well, there are two questiosequestrat that came place. remember, bush tax cuts expire if congress does nothing. so all of a sudden there are pressures that can bring the budget deficit down. the deficit problem gets solved in a blunt, crude way but maybe that's how democracy works. it's easy to spot all the problems we face, but i think there are also some silver linings here and that's where i'm putting my money. so let's get started. you've heard my thoughts. i'm now joined by three experts who have agreed to gaze into their crystal balls for 2012. slaughter, teacher at princeton, previously did strategic planning for hillary clinton. ian bremmer president of you're arab group, global risk research firm. daniel franklin, editor of the economist magazine's world in

2012 special edition. welcome. so ian, you do this kind of thing for a living. let's first start with something simple like iran. is the united states or israel going to attack iran in 2012? >> absolutely not. i can't see the united states doing it. keep in mind, it's still obama no matter what happens with the elections in 2012 at least for that year. and the israelis are highly incented that an attack it could come if they aren't satisfied. if it's going to come it will come from the u.s. the two sides aren't coming together. it will escalate. a when you have british embassy being occupied, what that's telling you, there's a lot of internal instability at the top of the regime. there's risk takers and folks that don't like us but much more

pragmatic. that plays out potentially in dangerous ways in 2012. that's very different from saying we're going to take out -- attempt to take out the nuclear program. >> one of the things i've heard in washington is there are a lot of people in washington who feel that the israeli belligerence is an effort to play us rather than a signal they are about to strike iran. do you think that's right? they are trying to say to us, look, we're getting really serious. unless you guys in washington do more, we might strike. >> i do, but i don't think it's working. i think everybody knows where everybody else is in the game. i agree with ian, i don't think there will be a strike. we'll just go ahead as we've been doing of the policy is not actually working. the iranians are getting closer and closer to a nuclear weapon but i don't see any overt attack, covert maybe. the one thing i will say, i'll go out on a limb here and make a prediction. i think there's a substantial chance ahmadinejad could be

impeached and iranians would move more toward a parliamentary system. you are seeing tensions within the iranian regime. turkey is pushing very hard on iran. turkey is playing the role iran wishes it were playing. with the turmoil in syria, i think ahmadinejad, he has obviously allies. he's got a lot of opposition within the top clerical establishment. >> to the point about being impeached, the supreme leader made a very strange statement in which he said one wonders why we have a parliamentary system. there are certainly benefits -- why we have a presidential system, benefits. you look, he's had trouble with ahmadinejad, who was sort of his guy. he had trouble before that. he's had trouble before that. so he may be thinking, look, why do i need this nationally elected figure who inevitably becomes a rival. why not a parliamentary system where you have this low profile

prime minister figure. really interesting would be the supreme leader, the longest serving leader in the middle east now, very old. if you were to die, would you have a new supreme leader or would that call into question the whole system. >> that would be a mess, in my opinion. do you. you have rural constituencies versus clerical constituencies. i'm not going to call that one. >> iran, anything? >> what's been painted is a benign scenario. the worst is avoided, the real showdown. if ahmadinejad were to go one way or another, that would obviously be a good thing as far as the west is concerned. my theory is it might not turn out quite as benign as that. at the very least i think and hope you're right that israel won't strike but things could go wrong. at the very least a ratcheting up. it is after all a very, very serious existential concern for israel. i think you could see some nasty

moments in the coming year with iran. >> an-marie said the policy wasn't working in that iran is moving forward. what's your best sense as to what the trajectory is in terms of nuclear development. >> i think it's working for iran ya iranians. that's part of the problem. united states, brits, europeans moving towards tougher sanctions. you can't sanction on energy. in a a recession, low growth, that's going to spike recession. who is going to do that. can't get them to sign up meaningful. their nuclear program continues. the real question unlike north korea, would the iranians actually test a nouk. there's lots of reason they might not. one is that the israelis have a

couple hundred nuclear weapons. they have never tested one. if the iranians do, what's the response? do they force sunni states to move toward their own weapons if they do so. strategic ambiguity from iranian is a good strategy. if ahmadinejad stays in place and there's a fight, there's potential for rogue action, which is destabilizing, what we've seen out of pakistan. doesn't mean israel will attack and doesn't mean we'll see a nuclear weapon any time soon literally on our horizon in 2012. >> you mentioned syria. is assad going to be in power by the end of 2012. >> i do not think there's any chance that assad will be in power by the end of 2012. who will be in power far more complicated. but i think the chances he will hold on for ood 12 months are nil. >> dan? >> i agree with that.

we saw in libya how long these regions can be in falling. i think it's inevitable he goes but could be quite long and certainly messy. >> i say a little longer on balance. he has the military still behind him. in some ways the military is leading, not assad. it's not getting rid of one person. this is not the mubarak analogy. the opposition is still relatively inchoate, isn't well armed. domestic opposition and international opposition is separate. the international pressure is huge. the sanctions from the arab league are meaningful and starting to really bite into the syrian economy. i wouldn't be stunned -- i think he's going. i wouldn't be stunned if we have this conversation in 12 month's time he's still there. >> that's a pinpoint prediction. you can call us back in a year and we will know. what about looking at the region one last time israel. is anything going to change in israel, israeli-palestinian situation hasn't changed 30 years. i suppose this would be a safe

one to say nothing will change. >> i don't see anything changing between israel and palestine. i think there's more likelihood of real internal protests within israel. we saw that this summer. i don't see that translating into major movement in any peace process. >> the change would have to come from israel, not just an american election. not going to be a huge amount of external involvement. >> fine on the israeli domestic environment. internationalally it is not a winner in this environment. you talk about presidential elections. you're not going to run on let's keep the peace treaty, run on let's support the arab streak. if that's true in egypt, also places like jordan, certainly turkey. a lot more pressure on the israelis, hard to imagine with the geopolitical environment turning that much against them will be able to forestall violence some place, breaking open with lebanon, maybe even on

syria, certainly with more palestinian attacks both ways. that's something we need to be worried about. >> all right. we're going to take a break. when we come back, more predictions. china, pakistan, all kinds of fun, troubled countries coming right up. ok! who gets occasional constipation, diarrhea, gas or bloating? get ahead of it! one phillips' colon health probiotic cap a day helps defend against digestive issues with three strains of good bacteria. hit me! [ female announcer ] live the regular life. phillips'. lord of the carry-on. sovereign of the security line. you never take an upgrade for granted.

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we are back with ann a marie slaughter, ian bremmer, dan. in the economist edition you edit, you say we spent the last years talking about the debt problems, get ready for china. we think of china as the world's greatest creditor. >> china massively supported our economy in the response to the credit crunch that happened in 2007, 2008. that is now a huge problem. they face the difficulty of controlling that at a time when the chinese economy is also slowing generally. bear in mind 2012 is a year of transition in china. they have a leadership transition starting at the

october -- probably october party congress. so the chinese leadership is going to be struggling with a difficult situation at home while this delicate process of moving from one generation of leaders to the next is takes place. >> they have generally handled these problems, bank debt, real estate bubbles, because they have so many levers to control. do you think they will be able to get through this one? >> the chinese government as stable as it is, has more capacity to kick a bigger can down the road than anyones. long-term that's a greater problem, greater chance of hard landing. for 2012 i think china is relatively safe on that front. >> how do you feel internally but also externally. would we've seen over the last few years is china got somewhat aggressive a year ago. for the last six or eight months dialing it back. they realize that rattled their neighbors in asia. where do you think china is

going first internally but also externally over the next year. >> i think there's a better than even chance there will be a naval incident between the chinese and either the vietnamese or the philippines. worse for the u.s. if it's philippines because they are a treaty ally. but it could be actually provoked by china. i'm more with daniel. i see more signs of instability, seesawing between trying to control inflation but realizing they are choking off credit and going back and tort. it's quite possible if they really get into trouble and could be connected with the leadership fight that they would provoke something. >> they are going to try to keep heads down in 2012 precisely because of this leadership transition. they have every incentive not to create any waves in the south china sea or elsewhere. if they can possibly help it, i think they will try to keep things very calm with their neighbors until this leadership transition is out of the way.

>> they may be provoked. >> arab spring. what countries are going to be clearly successful or clearly fail by 2012. >> i don't think that degree of clarity is going to be easy to spot. what i do think you might well see is a spreading south of the arab spring to parts of sub saharan africa. the most vulnerable countries are the nine leaders in place for offer two decades now. countries like zimbabwe, guinea. i think that's where you will find this desire for change. among people who now see what's going on and have been following very closely what's been happening in north africa and have the mobile telephones and other means of communication to organize. i don't think carbon copies but very much a sense of the protest

and possibility of protest. >> i think there's been a presumption among us in the west that the arab spring means authoritarian regions transitioning to something else. there's an enormous amount of economic pressure on democratic regimes as well. particularly about the periphery, i'm thinking about greece, hungary. those are places we could seed a lot more social discontent, populism that moves them in an authoritarian direction. they shouldn't lose sight and presume arab spring is just about countries we don't like. >> that brings us to europe. easy question, will the euro survive in its current form with all its members in 2012. >> i think there's probably now about a slightly just about even chance that it will survive but very uncomfortably large possibility that it won't. i say uncomfortable because the precipice that represents for europe is a very carey one. >> i would probably give it a

little better odds than that, more in the 60 to 70% range. i think it's striking all the people have been predicting it would collapse. they wouldn't believe in june it was still around in december. they were sure it was gone long before. i do think not just that the europeans are looking at the precipice but so are the chinese. europe is china's biggest trading partner. i think there are other sources of funds. if it really comes down to it, there will be -- there's funds available to make this happen. the real danger is miscalculation of timing. >> miscalculation of the markets. >> exactly. the timing isn't this. >> what happens on the streets. necessarily in the control. goes back to -- >> a lehman-like moment. >> yes. >> even then if the chinese were to come in with a big bushel of money it would help. >> the chinese aren't going to come with a bushel of money. interesting when sarkozy went over and said let's help and they said let's be

multi-lateral, which is chinese for no. going forward i think the eurozone actually stays together. but i also think in 12 month's time we may still be asking this question. the ability to continue to muddle through, especially if we have a slightly more benign economic environment in the united states and chinese continue to do we will is greater. we've seen central banks able to coordinate, make money, pump money in. if italy doesn't seem to be insolvent and technocratic governments stay in place and continue with austerity, germans, french, continue to press down. muddle through as unlikely as it seems right now may well be something we continue to see. >> technology, you in your issue have some interesting thoughts about what's going to high pressure in the world of technology. >> technology is always fascinating and moves very fast. i think you could imagine as a new territory to be fought over

for technology in the year. there are incredibly rich pickings fought over by fascinating combination of the existing tech titans and new startups. you have new ideas, new exciting business models to take that sort of territory. >> do you think those new startups will, as has been true in the past, over the last 50 yearsers all come out of america? >> i think they will tend to. america is just such a huge market and has a potential for a company to grow so quickly. you have the whole infrastructure, venture capital, ecosystem of silicon valley. that makes america a good bet for commercialization of the ideas. >> america is where the entrepreneurship is, technology investments are. chinese turn out millions and millions of engineers that's different from folks creating new businesses. 50% of chinese millionaires want

to live in the united states. look, steve jobs is dead but long live steve jobs. >> on that note, thank you very much. we will be back. [ slap! slap! ] [ male announcer ] your favorite foods fighting you? fight back fast with tums. calcium rich tums goes to work in seconds. nothing works faster. ♪ tum tum tum tum tums you noticed! these clothes are too big, so i'm donating them.

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now for aour what in the world segment. 2011 ended just hours ago and it will likely be recorded as a year of historic change. mass uprising up ended government across the arab world. economic mismanagement in europe led to changes in italy, greece and spain. 365 days ago you couldn't have predicted these events. you couldn't have imagined so many leaders would lose their jobs. so what if i told you you can predict in 2012 a lot of leaders will say good-bye. i'm not gazing into a magic crystal ball. 2012 is the year of elections. 59 countries will be tallying up votes, local, state or national. there are 193 countries in the world, so that's about a third of the world's nations. 26 of these may see a change in national leadership. together these changes could affect 53% of the world's

population representing half of the world's gdp. a lot of the change concentrated in the world's most powerful countries. four of the five u.n. security councilmembers could see changes at the top. that's russia, china, france, and of course the united states. these four countries alone represent 40ers % of the world's gdp. china will not have democratic elections but will see the biggest wholesale change at the top. 70% of the country's leadership will be new. we're not expecting any surprises. it's widely believed hu jintao and wen jiabao will be replaced. get used to their names. you'll be hearing them a lot. russia's election will be the most predictable. we know prime minister putin will become president putin again. even that change isn't as clear-cut as you would imagine. for the first time in years it seems like it's becoming acceptable in russia to

criticize the kremlin. putin was recently booed at a boxing match and his party had a stunningly weak showing in the recent parliamentary elections. what about washington? as you know, one year from now we could have a president mitt romney or newt gingrich or, of course, another obama term. south of the border that perennial pain in washington's back side hugo chavez himself needs to win an election, though he rigged the last one. there will be changes, too, in mexico, egypt, taiwan and kenya just to name a few. some of these elections and leadership changes involve nothing more than personnel shifts. others will be occasions for fundamental debates about the future course of the country. they could mean shifts so that we see a different europe, a different china, or a different america in the next few years. so for those of you who have been struck by the volatility of recent years, the roller coaster ride we've all been on from boom

to bust, crisis to crisis, i would say keep that seat belt strapped on because you're going to see a lot of churn over the next year as well. it may not be bad but there will be no shortage of political twists and turns around the world. those are just the ones we know about. one thing i can promise you, we'll be tracking them all right here on gps. so happy new year and we'll be right back. we've looked at the short-term future. coming up, we look way into the future of science and technology with harvard physicist. in louisiana. they came to see us in florida... nice try, they came to hang out with us in alabama... once folks heard mississippi had the welcome sign out, they couldn't wait to get here. this year was great but next year's gonna be even better. and anyone who knows the gulf knows that winter is primetime fun time. the sun's out and the water's beautiful. you can go deep sea fishing for amberjack, grouper and mackerel. our golf courses are open. our bed and breakfast have special rates.

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now a time for today's top stores. 6.2 earthquake struck off the coast of japan, tokyo, no reports of damage and the tsunami warning center did not issue a destructive tsunami warning. a 4.0 magnitude rattled eastern ohio, centered five miles northwest of youngstown. it hit one week after a smaller quake struck the region. iran says it tested the first nuclear fuel rod. they also fired medium range anti-radar missiles and military drills near the strait of hormuz. iran threatened to shut down the

strait, a major pathway for oil shipments. urging allegiance to king jong-il. in a new year's eve message they said they should place absolute trust in kim jong-il. they said u.s. forces an obstacle to peace in the peninsula and called for withdrawal in the region. those are the top stories. now back to fareed zakaria, gps. the large collider may sound like a weapon out of "star wars." in reality an extraordinary piece of engineering that allowed for more extraordinary breakthroughs in our understanding of the physical world. scientists there say within 2012 they hope to find the elusive particle that would unlock many mysteries about the beginning of the universe. in past decades these sort of advances would naturally have been made in america. so it's particularly galling to

some it was built near the border of france and switzerland. lisa randall, a top scientist, who teaches theoretically physics at harvard. she has a new book "knocking on heaven's door, how physics and scientific thinking eliminate the modern world." she joins me now. thank you for coming. >> thank you for having me here. >> what is going on in science and physics that excites you. how are we going to explain the world, the universe in different ways? >> well, right now i'm very excited because this is the era of experiments, even if the experiment is in europe. i don't care of there's an experiment going on. it's going to tell us very fundamental things about the underlying nature of matter. this collider, large, 27 kilometers in sir couple france. they are high energy, which means we can look for things we've never seen before.

e equals mc squared. it can tell us about mass particles, how masses come about, also why masses are what they are. the thing that's amazing about this is how challenging that question is to answer. that answer could tell us things about symmetries of space and time. i've been doing this a quarter of a century which is about the time the hadron has been under development. we wanted to study this scale, we're finally at a time it's happening. it's a very exciting time. >> what does it say this experiment was done in europe? we have come to think of these kind of big scientific experiments as essentially being done in america. there were similar colliders in mechanic. >> we shut down the closest thing we have, a lab near chicago. >> we shut it down because congress refused to fund the money? >> we shut it down for a couple

of reasons. clearly it will be a better machine, higher energy, intensity, more events. we probably could have kept it running for a couple more years and got a lot of useful information out of it, i think that was more political and money considerations. a rather small amount of money on the scale of what a particle collider costs. >> do you worry the federal government is not funding basic science on the left it used to. >> i worry we don't have a vision of how we're doing to continue funding it. i think for a long time america was the place where discoveries were made, at least my field. i visited a lab a european there saying we're better find a particle because we aren't finding things in europe. they are all being found in america. it has shifted as far as the experiment goes. >> you're worried as you look forward into the future, america is losing faith in science, if you watch the republican primary

debates, i think you ask them how many of them believe that evolution is, you know, a valid theory, i think there were maybe seven or eight people, one or two willing to say that. >> i think that's what i'm worried about, a country built on scientific events, technology, really served well for us. i think we should value that. why we would want to ignore what is being shown scientifically is a little bit beyond me. obviously dealing with the actual reality even if we don't like it, we're more likely to come out ahead. >> do you think there's another form of life somewhere out there? >> so the answer to that is first of all, it's just my opinion. i have no evidence. but i think there probably is another form of life out there. i think we probably won't ever know about it. i think given the vastness of the universe, how many possibilities there are, it seems extremely unlikely that we would be the only form of life.

the odds we would actually know about it because they communicate or interact or enough like us or close enough they could send -- i think is highly unlikely. we have wonderful technological tools that let us look out into the universe but there's a lot of the universe we don't see of the fact is we basically see various forms of light in some sense. that will only tell us so much at this point because there's so many sources. you can only see so far very clearly. but you know, having said that, that doesn't rule out the possibility there will be evidence or this we will find planets that seem enough like ours. it's certainly been quite impressive how many new planets have been discovered recently. i don't pt to say this will never happen. it's pretty e -- everyone makes pronouncements this will never happen and then they do.

i think it's unlikely we will discover life. >> lisa randall, glad to have you. >> thank you very much. >> we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] you are a business pro. premier of the packed bag. you know organization is key... and so is having a trusted assistant. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle...and go. you can even take a full-size or above and still pay the mid-size price. here we are... [ male announcer ] and there you go, business pro. there you go. go national. go like a pro.

okay. put on your thinking caps, it's time for a pop quiz. a baseball bat and ball cost $1.10 together of the bat cost $1 more than the ball. together they cost $1.10. how much does the ball cost? what is your answer? so i bet you said that the ball costs $0.10. if you did, you'd be dead wrong. don't worry. you have good company. the majority of students at mit and harvard got it wrong, too. the correct answer is the ball costs $0.05. the bat $1.05. if the bat and ball there's only a $0.90 difference between the bat and ball not a dollar.

why does everyone get it wrong? the next guest will explain, recipient for nobel prize for economics also a psychologist. has a new book, thinking fast and slow. welcome. professor, pleasure to have you on. >> glad to be here. >> so what struck me about the example, it's a perfect example of why it's not a good idea to think fast. you're convinced you're right and it's dead wrong. what is it we're doing there that makes that happen? >> there are two things. one is something that happens in your mind, the association. for some reason that problem brings $0.10 to mind. the other thing is something that doesn't happen. you don't think. that's the key difference. >> if you wrote it out as an equation i found you don't -- >> you don't make a mistake. $0.10 and another dollar that comes to $1.20. they don't trick.

there are interesting differences between the people that trick and people that don't. at harvard and princeton, half of the people, or over half in some cases make a mistake on that one. other universities, have to stand up for princeton, other universities it's worse. >> tell me this, is this a pattern that you detect in human behavior that there are some things people think fast about and some things they think slow about? how would you describe this difference? >> most of the time we think fast. most of the time we're expert at what we're doing. most of the time what we're doing is right. we do it with very little work and very little effort. there is slow thinking, effortful, it's hard work. it turns out by and large we clearly -- most people are wired to avoid it. we try to do as little as possible of the slow thinking. very hard work. so sometimes the fast thinking

delivers the wrong suggestion and the slow thinking doesn't block it, than people come out with mistakes. >> people point out that racism is kind of a product of that kind of very quick thinking. prejudice comes to mind quickly. >> of course. we have associations to i think so we have associations to tables and to dogs and cats and harvard professors and that's the way the mind works. it's an association machine. >> when you think about this, does it make you feel the way in this economics is done, the way we think about economics is all wrong? because there is a sense in which what you're describing is the human capacity to really make false judgments all the time, to not know what is in your best rational self-interest. >> the idea that people are completely rational really is

something very important, which is that the government has the responsibility to ensure disclosure. that people are given correct information when they interact in the market. it doesn't matter for a rational agent whether the print is small or large. it matters a lot for people with a lazy sort of system, lazy, slow thinking. they don't read the small print. none of us read the things that flash on the computer screen and you say i agree at the end. that is a place where behavior economics is making an important contributions and i think a correction to the old classical economic model of the rational agent. >> the sort of classic example of what you're saying, you give people the default option to save rather than not to save. on their salary forms you say check here if you want to opt out of the ira or savings plan

so the default is they save and the result is you have many, many more people saving. >> one of the most dramatic examples of that is in europe. about half of the country is on organ donation have an opt in form. you have to check if you want to donate your organs, otherwise you don't of the default is you don't. the other half is the default you do donate and you have to check if you don't. the percentage of donations is roughly 90% in one case and about 15% in the other. on very consequential decisions people can be guided by those really superficial aspects of the situation. >> do you think what this tells you is the government should be more active in trying to shape people's choices? what areas would you advocate more is done? >> i think this is something that is actually happening today in the obama white house because

you have a behavior economist in charge of regulation. the focus there is consumer protection. it's making sure not only things are disclosed, everybody agrees, that's the law, they have to be disclosed, but they are disclosed in a way that accommodates the limitations of people. >> you don'ten it interferes with the good functioning of a market. >> well, nobody wants a world in which another government will decide what you eat. that's not what will prevent people from eating fast-food. that's the limit. that's a balance. there's a balance between freedom, which everyone wants to protect and the need of individuals to be in some cases helped, make decisions they would want to have made. it's not that you're forcing people into things they don't want. in the case of saving, most people want to save more than they do.

they are grateful when you help them save more than they do. that is a balance that they are seeking and it's a difficult balance to achieve. >> when you first saw that baseball bat and ball question, did you get it wrong or right? >> well, i think i got it right. i'm good at those things and i check. >> daniel kahneman, pleasure to have you on. >> it's a pleasure to be here. >> we will be back. ♪

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as we welcome 2012, one more look back at 2011 for the question this week. what was the biggest story on twitter in 2011 based on hashtag use. if you don't know what that means, ask your kids. was it a, egypt, b, bin laden, c, japan, or d, the super bowl. stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer. make sure to go to cnn.com/gps for ten more questions. while you're there check out our website, the global public square where you'll find smart interviews and takes by some of our favorite experts. don't forget you can follow us on twitter and facebook as well. if you haven't bought all your

christmas presents yet, maybe you can make up for it with a new year's res lewis to buy this week's book of the week. drum rolls for crass self-promotion, my new book, revised and updated edition. if you haven't yet bought a copy, please do. my publisher will thank you and my kids will thank you. while i'm at it, if you are a gps fan buy our mugs. i was told they are the bess tv show mugs ever seen. i think that's a compliment. go to the website for the link. now the last look. a big birthday today taking place on the other side of the upon. the celebrant is 10 years old. doesn't seem to be in the mood for a party. ten years ago euro bank note born. to mark the occasion the embattled european bank spent precious euros to make a video.

>> europe builds bridges and inspires hope. it enables its people to look to the future with confidence. >> really? hope, confidence? has the ecb been reading the same news i have? the video goes on to tout the bills themselves. >> placed end to end the 19.9 billion bank notes produced for the changeover could have stretched to the moon and back five times over. >> quite impressive. but have you ever looked at any of those 14.9 billion euro notes? they are the epitome of the problem of design by committee. in order to come up with designs that were sure not to offend any member countries, the bills depict no statesman, no landmarks, no identifiable anything. these bridges on the back of the bills, they don't exist anywhere, nor do the architectural fragments on the front. anyway, happy birthday, euro. maybe you have a long and he