It's not a Ponzi (a single fraudster faking returns) at all.  It's much closer to a pyramid (people buying in then desperately trying to get more people to buy in), though still different in a couple important ways.

As for the rest of it, that's basically what I've been saying for a while.  Until there's a lot more commerce, it's overvalued.  But everyone's so hung up on making sure they don't get left out when people start getting rich.

This won't end in 12/2012.  That will just raise the bar a little by decreasing inflation.  The fact that there's excess currency supply (currently hoarded) will eventually make itself known as people begin putting it back on the market.

This is why I occasionally toss around RevCoin (Exchange-stabilized low-inflation coins), GEM (generation-stabilized low-inflation coins), EnCoin (a more complicated system)...  All of which will undermine the wild "We're gonna be rich!" speculation, and leave pricing to market-based immediate needs and relatively short-term economic speculation.