At this time last year, I wrote an article attempting to find areas of consensus among the economic reports crossing my desk. Crystal balls were pretty foggy, and the future was anyone’s guess — as was evident in the multitude of conflicting forecasts being released daily. Contrary to the expectations of a lot of the dismal scientists, 2013 turned out to be a pretty good year — relatively speaking. Because of this stability, economic forecasts for 2014 seem to be pretty much in agreement. The differences come more from home bias than from truly differing opinions.

For example, if you are an economist in the United States, you are feeling pretty confident that the US economy is well on its way to a stellar year — if only Europe can get its act together and not pull everyone down again.

If you are a European economist, you are looking at the European landscape and proclaiming that the worst is behind us — if only the US tapering of its quantitative easing progr