Before it gets to late in the year, I want to write down a few predictions so that I can remind myself next year of what I thought. I remembered to do this today after reading a couple that I passed on verbally to friends a month ago, and are now being taken up by those such as the head of the IMF, and I want to see how I go against the experts.

• The carbon tax will end up being a non-issue, or even net positive to the Gillard government with the electorate when it comes into effect on 1 July. As my buddy JC said in October, as long as the difference to what the average taxpayer gets back in benefit is greater than their additional costs by the price of a a slab of VB or more, it will be seen as a net benefit.

• Kevin Rudd will not successfully challenge Julia Gillard to take over leadership of the Labor Party. In fact, he probably won’t even mount an actual challenge at all. Tony Abbott is as likely to face a challenge of leadership as Julia Gillard is as it comes closer to the next election and the Coalition discovers that “no” is not a policy position that excites the electorate.

• Europe is already in a recession, and when they finally do the numbers after the fact, it will be a big one. My guess is a drop in GDP in the Euro zone of 3% and a duration of 2 years. Keynesian economic theory will win out in the argument over austerity or stimulus, but the Germans (and others) who want to paint the sovereign debt issues in Europe as a morality tale will realise this way to late, or refuse to admit it at least.

• Greece will default on its sovereign debt after failing to come to an agreement with its lenders and failing to get assistance from the European Central Bank (due to the point above) and will therefore leave the euro and reintroduce its own currency so that it can devalue it in order to address its problem as an alternative to the austerity program being pushed on it (that cannot work in any case).

• The USA will escape any serious damage from the european sovereign debt crisis and have surprisingly good growth in 2012 of about 2% of GDP.

• Barack Obama will be re-elected as President in the USA over Mitt Romney. Unfortunately for Mittens, this is not going to be the year for someone in the 0.01% of the wealth category to win amongst the Occupiers or the Tea Party, and despite what they say in public, I don’t think most Americans (religious or not) are ready to elect a Mormon as president. In addition, the economy in the US is starting to get better for real people, and they will vote based on their current economic condition.

• Synaptor apps will be one of the biggest internet successes of the year in Australia