My final entry for this year as 2009 draws to an end – and what a year it has been. These are some random thoughts – mostly personal – about the year that will pass into history in just over a couple of hours. We saw the inauguration of the first African American president of the US and that was something that I did not expect to see in my lifetime. It was a presidency that most of us who voted for him had the highest of hopes and expectations which at this point remains unrealized for the most part. We came to the brink of a financial cataclysm where…