There’s a clear choice in Tuesday’s presidential election, and this column has in one way or another indicated its preference. However this close to the election, it is increasingly apparent that, given a realistic assessment of the policies likely to be pursued by either candidate, the years 2013-17 will be very unpleasant indeed. Entirely contrary to the experiences of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, who both appear to have enjoyed their years in office, the President in the next four years will on many occasions wish he had chosen another line of work.

The United States’ problems, for which the President is directly responsible, are only one part of the noxious equation. Throughout the world, short-term policies have been pursued for the last five years, or in some cases for very much longer than that, and the bills for these episodes of fecklessness will come due in the next Presidential term. Given the highly globalized nature of the world we live in, these problems cannot be ignored; their effect on global trade and confidence, transmitted through the already fragile global financial system, will quickly produce unpleasant knock-on effects in the United States. The President may think he need not worry about developments in the Chinese banking system, for example, but he will discover that a collapse there, if it happens, will quickly cause adverse effects on the U.S. economy, slowing trade and increasing job losses.

The longest-festering of the problems likely to become critical in the next four years is that of Japan’s government debt. Currently 230% of GDP, it is increasing at around 10% of GDP each year, as the economy enjoys very little growth and the politicians struggle to raise revenues above 50% of spending. It’s possible that Japan may next year elect the LDP’s Shinzo Abe, who showed at least some interest in attacking the problem in his previous period of office in 2006-7. Moreover, the current government has itself addressed the deficit, by raising Japan’s sales tax. However that may turn out counterproductive; if higher taxes produce renewed recession, the debt/GDP ratio will rise further, even though the deficit itself may decline.

The largest government debt ever successfully reduced without default was 250% of GDP, by Britain after 1815 and again after 1945 (the second time by inducing prolonged inflation and ripping off its citizens with negative real interest rates, thereby producing economic decline.) By January 2017 Japan’s debt, at present rates of progress, will be 270% of GDP. The chances are that the market will notice the lack of precedent for successful management of such an indebtedness, and will panic, forcing up Japanese real interest rates and causing a major economic disruption (probably accompanied by huge loss of wealth and hardship, as the Japanese government, unable to finance its deficit, is forced to default.)

Europe’s problem is younger than Japan’s, dating to the formation of the euro in 1999 rather than to the bursting of the Japanese bubble in 1990. However it is more insoluble. Whereas there is always the hope that even the consensus-mad Japanese will get a real leader who will take the politically difficult steps needed to avoid a crisis, Europe is structurally incapable of producing such a leader, because of the bureaucratic spaghetti built into the EU system. If one country, say Germany, were to get leadership capable of solving the problem, it would immediately be opposed by most of the other 16 members of the euro and fanatically opposed by the EU’s Ayn Rand-villain central officials, permanent bureaucracy and parliament. (The EU parliament must be the only parliamentary body that is ideologically committed to greater public spending, as distinct from just wanting to spread the boodle about.)

As I discussed last week, the EU has locked itself into a position of throwing ever-increasing resources at the budget problems of its weaker members, with no possibility of allowing them to escape from the euro and restore the competitiveness of their economies. Like most other public sector ideas spawned by Keynesians, this is at most a short-term solution to the common currency’s problems. The chances are that, like the Japanese problem and several other problems to be discussed, the short-term solution will prove to be unworkable well before January 2017. At that point, the debt markets for most Eurozone government bonds will collapse and the EU will enter into a prolonged and deep recession, with living standards for all EU members declining by perhaps 20% as the continent’s capital base is liquidated. Needless to say, the effect on the U.S. economy of such a development will be very ugly indeed.

In the last four years, the world’s economic problems have appeared concentrated in its richer countries. Even Canada and Australia, which have strong energy and mineral sectors, have grown surprisingly sluggishly. The principal long-term cause of rich countries’ problems has been the improved global outsourcing capability through modern communications and the Internet. Better policies would have reduced the impact of these problems, as in Canada and Australia, but they are not about to go away.

The BRIC countries, on the other hand, have got themselves into trouble that is entirely of their own making. They were immensely blessed in the 2000s, China and India by the Internet and its facilitation of global supply chains, and Russia and Brazil by the rise in prices for energy and minerals. Had they used their good fortune to develop their economies on a sound basis, while reforming and opening up their political structures, they would today be rapidly rising towards riches. However none of them did this. Instead both democratic Brazil and India and authoritarian Russia and China indulged in an orgy of corruption and government aggrandizement. Thus if you take the four leading indices of market freedom, ease of doing business and corruption, all four BRICs rank lower than 100th among the world’s 180 countries in their average score, having dropped substantially in the last decade.

As well as a Japan crisis and a Europe crisis, there will thus before 2017 be a BRIC crisis, in which all four of these misguided and overhyped entities run into an economic brick wall. China’s brick wall will be a collapse of the banking system, India’s an inability to finance its ever-greedy government, Russia’s an inability to sell enough energy to finance its military machine and Brazil’s a collapse into Latin American chaos. All four countries have suffered from the disease of excessively easy money, with foreign capital available in any amounts; all four have embezzled the proceeds and will end having brought very little long-term wealth to their unfortunate citizenry. Meanwhile their collapse will produce a collapse of confidence as innumerable foolish investment institutions realize they have lost their money.

Add to these three potential disasters the likelihood of a major Middle East blow-up, as Iran seeks to use its new-found nuclear capability (a political, not an economic problem) and you have an international scene that offers nothing but angst for the unfortunate who wins on Tuesday. Needless to say, however, there are potential domestic crises to add to the unpleasantness.

For a start, it really is most unlikely that the Ben Bernanke zero-rates bubble can continue inflating calmly for another four years. Corporate profits are already beginning to decline from their unnatural peak, the stock market is close to double its equilibrium level, and ever-more-frantic attempts by Bernanke and a soft-money successor, maybe Janet Yellen, will produce hyperinflation in asset prices, house prices and eventually consumer prices, without postponing the inevitable bond and stock market crash by more than a few months. A President Romney might attempt to address this problem by appointing a sound-money successor to Bernanke, but at this stage it’s likely that such a successor would only succeed in precipitating the crisis and recession. The only consolation is that a recession precipitated is a recession lessened, so if the international dominoes manage to prop themselves up, the U.S. might be emerging from it by the time the next election is due. However the chances of that mercy are not all that great.

Finally, there is the factor that will probably not cause a crash in the short term, but looms unpleasantly over the long-term picture – the U.S. budget deficit and beyond that the twin deficits in healthcare and social security. If nothing is done, the U.S. will add another $5-6 trillion to its debts by 2017, taking its debt to GDP ratio to around 130%. That would probably not be enough to precipitate a crisis – except that by that time social security will be running a substantial deficit and Medicare will be approaching bankruptcy, with or without Obamacare.

The chances are therefore that if as is likely politicians punt the problem, legislating away most of the “fiscal cliff” and doing little to solve the trust fund deficits, the bond market will panic at some time before 2017, forcing yet another recession if none had happened before. Of course, even if the politicians are highly responsible about the deficits, and inflict massive pain on the electorate to solve them, one of the international problems will most likely plunge the world into renewed recession anyway. But hey, that’s politics!

The President elected on Tuesday will thus have a miserable term in office. If President Obama is really clever, he will hope to do a Grover Cleveland, leaving Romney with the disasters of the next four years and returning in 2017 with a massively renewed mandate. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t think he’s quite that smart.

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(The Bear’s Lair is a weekly column that is intended to appear each Monday, an appropriately gloomy day of the week. Its rationale is that the proportion of “sell” recommendations put out by Wall Street houses remains far below that of “buy” recommendations. Accordingly, investors have an excess of positive information and very little negative information. The column thus takes the ursine view of life and the market, in the hope that it may be usefully different from what investors see elsewhere.)