Given the events of this week, one has to ask: What's crazier, the Mayan apocalypse or the fiscal cliff?

In fairness to the Mayans, there is little evidence that they ever said that the final day of their Long Count Calendar would produce doomsday. This scenario seems to have emerged from the ethers of the global Internet. Or from the professional apocalyptic Roland Emmerich, a Hollywood director whose movie "2012" conflated Mayan predictions and climate warming to produce a global cataclysm.

Which brings us to the fiscal cliff. It's a little hard not to notice that the inhabitants of the ancient city of Washington—politicians, President and the press—have by now built December 31 into an American doomsday. A political device that emerged in the summer of 2011 from the hapless budget negotiations between President Obama and Republican Congressional leaders has morphed into an end-of-days event—the fiscal cliff.

The idea that the expiration of a tax law and automatic spending cuts in a $4 trillion budget would drive the U.S. into the sea appears to have taken hold of Washingtonians after a famous Beltway shaman, Ben Bernanke, predicted a "massive fiscal cliff" during a Congressional ceremony this past February.