The Americans, bless them, never miss an opportunity to hype a product or an issue. And the so-called "fiscal cliff" is another example of the type of drama that characterizes its noisy policy scape. Frankly, the sooner the cliff is reached the better. And Canadians have much at stake too.

After the Nexen deal was approved, Prime Minister Stephen Harper framed this as the "end of a trend" not the "beginning" of a buyout frenzy by more sovereign-owned enterprises (SOEs). But this is not the end. This is the beginning of the beginning. Phone calls are already being made to launch new buyouts by foreigners here.

America's day of fiscal reckoning has been postponed because of the rise of the Tea Party anti-state movement. Fiscal "cliff" is the wrong metaphor. What's about to happen is not the end of the world, as falling off a cliff would imply. A better metaphor is America is about to head into a "fiscal cold shower."

The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Zurich announced that the world's first "humanoid" robot will be "born" in March. It's an incredible achievement, but overshadowed by the fact that "Roboys" are not yet running our governments, programmed for fiscal responsibility in order to fix our finances.