Caveat emptor: "Avoid making predictions – especially about the future."
–Sam Goldwyn
1. The Summer Olympics and spectacular new Beijing architecture erases the tainted-import stories of 2007.
2. Dynamic French president Nicolas Sarkozy emerges as the leading voice for Europe, abetted by British PM Gordon Brown, less of a Europhile than his predecessor.
3. The recent addition to Europe's passport-free Schengen zone of nine members, bringing the total to 24 countries with 400 million people, prods a 2008 expansion to include Switzerland, one of the world's most isolationist nations. This increases pressure on Britain to join on economic grounds of lower transport costs, and on Russia not to thwart Ukraine, Romania and other former Soviet satellite states from membership in an economic power bloc already eclipsing the U.S.
4. Afghanistan and Pakistan's western border region finally become the central front in the struggle against terrorism by Islamic extremists, as they should have been from the start. The pro-U.S. Sarkozy sends additional troops which, in contrast with the current French concentration in relatively stable Kabul, are deployed in the more dangerous east and south, bolstering Canadian and British forces in Kandahar and Hellmand provinces. Britain increases its troops in the southwest, and Australia joins the cause. The U.S. steps up its redeployment of forces from Iraq to Afghanistan.
5. In part to enhance his party's electoral prospects in Quebec, Stephen Harper unveils a revamped reconstruction and humanitarian-relief program for Afghanistan.
6. In referenda, Colombia and ethnically divided Belgium narrowly vote against national breakups. Kosovo and Chechnya continue to lack sufficient outside support to separate from Serbia and Russia, respectively, although Kosovo unilaterally declares its independence.
7. Newly elected Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, 42, is predecessor Vladimir Putin's puppet, as expected, but the Deep Purple music fan starts calling his own shots by year-end.
8. Kevin Rudd, new Australian PM after defeating John Howard last year, rejects Australia's George W. Bush-granted status as America's local "sheriff." The Aussies continue their decades-old humanitarian and conflict-resolution work in the Solomons and elsewhere in the region but on their own terms.
9. Stephen Harper forms a second minority government in a fall election. Stephane Dion retires from the Liberal leadership after a miserable Grit showing.
10. In narrow victory over John McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected 44th U.S. president.
11. Barack Obama accepts president-elect Clinton's offer to nominate him U.S. secretary of state.
12. Food is the new oil. Biofuel and developing-world demand will keep soaring prices for wheat, corn and other agricultural commodities high. Investors like fertilizer giant Potash Corp., grain handlers Agrium and Viterra (the former Saskatchewan Wheat Pool), and farm-equipment makers Deere, Caterpillar and Case New Holland.
13. Nuke stocks glow. North America is slowly shedding its wariness of nuclear power, also poised for big gains in Europe and Asia. Investors go for uranium producers including Canada's Cameco, and turbine makers GE and France's Alstom.
14. Safer than sorry stocks are in favour amid continuing upheaval in capital and equity markets. Sound "buy and forget" stocks include GE, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Shoppers Drug Mart, United Technologies (Otis, Carrier, Pratt & Whitney) and reasonably priced utilities.
15. GM emerges as an unlikely turnaround play, as benefits begin to kick in from production cuts, reduced healthcare burden and more vehicles with showroom appeal.
16. With a massive oil discovery off its Atlantic coast this summer, Brazil is poised to attain the status of an OPEC producer, and may well join OPEC by 2010.
17. Rupert Murdoch, whose long ownership tenure at the Times of London has not restored the Times' prestige, surprises fretful journos by making only cosmetic changes to his newly acquired Wall Street Journal.
18. Ottawa raises no objections to takeover bids for Canadian-owned oilpatch giants Suncor Energy Inc. and EnCana Corp. by consortia formed among Britain's BP PLC, Anglo-Dutch producer Royal Dutch/Shell Group PLC, France's Total SA, Italy's ENI SpA and Spain's Repsol YPF.
19. A troubled Palm Inc., pioneer in PDAs and once a potentially formidable rival to Ontario-based BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd., puts itself on auction block.
20. Hapless Nortel, having this year abandoned its third-generation wireless (3G) business – once a cornerstone of future growth prospects – talks merger with Cisco, the healthiest survivor of the telecom crash of 2000-02.
21. Hapless Motorola, after this year sacking its second CEO in three years, talks merger with a Nokia seeking a stronger foothold in North America.
22. Hapless French telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent wearies of CEO Patricia Russo's failure to deliver on turnaround plans; opts this time for a CEO fluent in French.
23. Amid continuing distribution woes at partner Loblaw Cos. that keep its Joe Fresh apparel boutiques out of stock, design maven Joe Mimran begins devoting most of his time to his other businesses.
24. Auto-parts investors shift into Linamar and Martinrea, two straightforward companies with appealing growth potential, and out of Magna International Inc., soon to be controlled by a convoluted partnership between founder Frank Stronach and Russian oligarch Oleg Derapaska, overly dependent on sales to Detroit's ailing Big Three, and a backdoor financier of a Stronach racetrack enterprise that seems fated never to succeed.
25. Lingerie merchant La Senza, now owned by the parent of Victoria's Secret, begins rebranding itself under the better-known VS banner, despite protestations to the contrary by La Senza CEO Irv Teitelbaum at the time of company's 2007 sale.
26. Quebecor Inc. spins off basket case Quebecor World, briefly the world's largest printer, but now close to unsalvageable after acquisition-related culture clashes, price wars and failure to keep costs down in a sector with notoriously thin margins.
27. In a bid for critical mass, Royal Bank of Canada explores merging its southeastern U.S. retail banking franchise with Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks, the dominant regional player, in exchange for a controlling equity stake in the combined firm.
28. The troika spearheading the Loblaw Cos. turnaround bid, including Galen Weston Jr., will show substantial progress in solving the firm's distribution crisis or will be replaced by year end with a distribution expert from logistics-savvy Wal-Mart or Target.
29. London widens its lead over New York as the world's financial capital as subprime-mortgage defaults and soured loans to precariously financed private-equity buyouts further weaken the balance sheets of America's largest banks and brokers.
30. Oscar loves Atonement.
Quotable tycoon
"The difference between a skinflint banker and a reckless banker is a recession."
–Walter Wriston, CEO of Citibank (now Citigroup Inc.) in the 1980s.