A lot of discussion centers around how to accelerate economic growth. But as one exec puts it, "the greatest stimulus is certainty." (Credit for that to Robert Reynolds, CEO of Putnam Investments.)

If your company does a formal or even informal budget projection for 2013, planning to buy a piece of equipment and develop a new product category,  then you are making decisions about the likely condition of your customers' incomes, and the economy as a whole.

Yet we don't know tax rates for 2013, and we don't know how close we'll get to the "fiscal cliff," or who will fall over the edge - and perhaps take others with them.

Our leaders really need to fix this slatternly behavior - this is no way to run a business, muich less a country.