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Christine St Anne is Morningstar's online funds and ETFs editor.

AMP Capital Investors head of investment strategy Shane Oliver has described 2011 as "the year of disasters".

Earthquakes, floods, and civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa dominated the news alongside the debt woes in the US and Europe.

Global growth remained slow and fragile, monetary tightening continued in emerging countries, while investor confidence took a dive following the debt debacles in the US and Europe.

"While the US picked up pace through the second half, Europe looks to have fallen into recession and emerging countries have slowed," Oliver says.

For global investment manager Jeremy Grantham, the eurozone debt problem is a "terrifying situation".

Grantham has sustained a bearish view on global markets for some time now, but his latest quarterly letter is particularly pessimistic.

The US-based manager is particularly bleak about the US economy. He believes the situation in the US represents "gross financial incompetence on sale hitherto undreamed of".

He notes the US government has consistently demonstrated a lack of both the ability and willingness to address long-term issues. Moreover, the country has become "one of the least equal societies in the developed world. This imbalance in equity will not lead to sustained growth."

"Having an economy in which the average worker makes little or no economic progress slowly erodes economic balance, leaving us with strong sales of BMWs and other premium goods and weak, erratic sales of what might be called ordinary goods, resulting in weaker and more unstable growth," Grantham says.

Grantham's bearish view extends well into the new year and he in fact believes an "imminent recovery will not come".

"Looking out a year, the overall picture seems so much worse than the generally benign forecast of 4 per cent global growth from the IMF (International Monetary Fund)," Grantham says.

"The probabilities of bad outcomes are not as high for us today as they were in early 2008 ... but the possibility of extremely bad and long-lasting problems looks as bad to me now as it ever has."

Back in Australia, consumers are also feeling gloomy. Despite the rate cuts by the Reserve Bank of Australia, consumer sentiment still fell in December. According to the latest Westpac-Melbourne Institute survey of consumer sentiment, sentiment fell 8.3 per cent in December to 94.7, down from 103.4 in November.

So will this doom and gloom continue for 2012?

AMP Capital's Oliver believes the bad news may already be factored into equity markets, including those of Europe.

He believes there are several reasons for a bit of "cautious optimism". Oliver is confident Europe will reach a resolution of some sort.