It seems like only a year ago that the last ICBW annual predictions were posted...which means that it's time for yet another ICBW annual predictions post.  First, let's review last year's predictions:

• Juiced by the Fed's already-tipped plans to further ease its monetary policy, the economy and asset markets will continue to rise overall in 2024, with the caveat that inflation will also tick upward from its current 3% level, pulling bonds down slightly.  Even cryptocurrencies will participate in the Fed-induced market frothiness.

The only error here was that inflation fell slightly instead of ticking upwards.  Otherwise, this prediction was pretty accurate.

• Donald Trump will defeat Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election, after the Supreme Court blocks states from removing him from the ballot on 14th-Amendment grounds, and his lawyers succeed in getting his criminal trials postponed until after the election.  Republicans will also take control of the Senate and expand their lead in the House, but by very little in both cases.  The election will be accompanied by considerable unrest, but it will consist mostly of marches, sit-ins and the like, with relatively little 2020-style rioting.  In fact, the press and other institutions will be remarkably resigned to the result, having recognized in advance this time that such an outcome was a real possibility.  There will be the usual predictions of doom and threats to move to Canada, but nothing like the hysteria of 2016.

One of the predicted candidates was incorrect, of course--I blame Joe Biden's health scare in July, without which he would never have been forced out of the race.  The health of public figures is nearly impossible to predict--I tried unsuccessfully for years--so I consider this error understandable.  The prediction was also incorrect in one other minor detail:  Trump did get tried and convicted on one set of charges, although sentencing was postponed till after the election.  Otherwise, the prediction looks fairly accurate.

• The war in Ukraine will continue to grind on at a low level, with both sides too resource- and manpower-constrained, and too uncertain about the outcome of the US presidential election--with its enormous potential effects on the conflict--to make any bold moves.

The Ukrainians did attempt an invasion of Russian territory, and began firing missiles at major installations in Russian territory, after finally getting US permission to do so.  But otherwise the war unfolded roughly as predicted.

• Israel will continue to grind down Hamas in Gaza for a few more months, as Western pro-Hamas protests gradually peter out. Eventually,  political authority in Gaza will be transferred to some new entity--possibly Gulf-sponsored.  Israel will also make some sort of deal with Hezbollah that involves a buffer zone on the Lebanese side of the border--as mandated by UN resolution 1701--thus averting a full-scale war between the two sides.  Regardless, PM Netanyahu will not last the year as prime minister--his government, stained by the October 7th debacle, will fall, and a center-left coalition, probably led by Benny Gantz, will win the subsequent election.

This prediction was incorrect in almost every respect, for one simple reason:  the Biden administration turned sharply against Israel early in 2024, placing all sorts of demands on Israel and impeding its military operations against its enemies in various ways, including various threats of harsh actions against Israel if it didn't delay or forgo various moves.  This stance slowed down Israeli operations in Gaza to the point where they are currently where they would have been expected to have been months ago, with the result that no "day after" plan for Gaza has even been decided on, much less implemented.  Similar impediments to Israel in Lebanon encouraged Hezbollah to reject all ceasefire proposals, forcing Israel to take decisive action there.  Finally, Benny Gantz' decision to side with the US administration against Netanyahu basically saved the latter's career, severely weakening Gantz domestically and persuading enough voters to return to Bibi that his political position is no longer in immediate peril.  

• Elsewhere, the Iranian regime will continue to harass US troops via its proxies, and the US will continue to do only the barest minimum necessary not to appear to be abjectly capitulating to Iranian pressure.  The alliance among China, Russia and Iran will further deepen, but China will continue its cautious, incremental power projection strategy--as its economic implosion continues--rather than launch any major attacks or invasions (e.g., of Taiwan). 

An easy prediction to get 100% correct--as indeed it was.

• Claudine Gay will eventually resign the presidency of Harvard, but otherwise the Ivy League, and the rest of elite academia, will make only token gestures towards addressing their collective reputational collapse.  Instead, they will focus on their rapidly mounting financial problems, as both donors and students flee in droves, the former in response to the institutions' declining prestige and the latter driven by newfound cost-consciousness.

I'd judge this prediction to be substantially correct--Gay did go; the surge of pro-terrorist protests on elite campuses in the spring gave those schools yet another opportunity to show their tolerance of anti-Semitism, which they enthusiastically chose not to pass up; and donations did plummet at Harvard, along with student applications.  (Interestingly, applications were actually up at other Ivy League schools--particularly Yale, which openly flouted the Supreme Court ruling in the SFFA case, actually boosting its non-Asian minority enrollment.  It's possible that it thereby encouraged a flood of applications from underqualified minority students hoping to benefit from Yale's renewed commitment to lowering academic standards for them.)

• The proliferation of AI tools for common personal and workplace tasks, such as document composition and summarization, will make AI more familiar to its users and hence somewhat counteract the hysterical fears being spread by some AI "experts" about a supposed imminent AI-triggered apocalypse.

This was a rather general prediction, so I don't give myself much credit for its accuracy, but scare stories about AI destroying humanity do seem to have abated lately...

And now for this year's predictions for 2025:

• The economy will be strong through the first half of 2025, then weaken considerably, led by an asset bubble collapse some time during the year (the timing of such crashes is of course impossible to predict with any confidence).  A recession will be avoided, but the slowdown will result in asset markets being net negative by the end of the year.
• The incoming Trump administration will, similarly, enjoy a honeymoon for the first half of the year, as it focuses on low-hanging fruit like immigration enforcement, anti-crime measures, and elimination of various "woke" programs initiated by the previous administration.  However, the popularity surge will gradually dissipate over the second half, as infighting among Republicans resurfaces--along with Trump's trademark verbal intemperance--and Democrats identify a few attack lines to focus on.  Trump's approval rating will thus be net negative by the end of the year.
• The war in Gaza will wrap up this year and proceed to the predicted next phase--reconstitution of a new government and reconstruction.  However, there will be no hostage deal, and absent rescue operations, no hostages will be released alive.  In Lebanon, Israel will resume hostilities after the ceasefire, and continue creating a Hezbollah-free buffer zone south of the Litani river.  However, Hezbollah, while weakened, will remain dominant in the rest of Lebanon, and a ceasefire deal will eventually be reached that nominally concedes the buffer zone that (both sides recognize) Hezbollah will spend the next few years gradually re-infiltrating.
• Elsewhere in the Middle East, Syria's new regime will increasingly show itself to be a radical Islamist stronghold under Turkey's protection; the US and Israel will cooperate in suppressing the Houthis' offensive capacity, thus reopening the Red Sea-Suez Canal route to regular shipping; and Ayatollah Khamenei's son Mojtaba will consolidate his position as heir to the weakened-but-surviving Iranian regime.  In Israel, the wind-down of the war will refocus the public on domestic concerns, and Bibi's popularity will decline accordingly.  However, his coalition will manage to hold together and retain power through the year.
• Despite the Trump administration's efforts, there will be no ceasefire deal in the Ukraine.  Ukraine's military position will continue to deteriorate, prompting significant European efforts to rescue it from defeat despite relative American indifference.  Those efforts will increase direct confrontations between Russia and Europe, leading to an expansion of direct Russian attacks on Europe along the lines of Russia's recent destruction of European undersea cables.
• Justin Trudeau will resign as prime minister of Canada, handing the reins over to a new Liberal Party leader who will govern briefly before being utterly demolished by Pierre Poilievre's Conservative Party in a fall election.
• The decline of the dine-in restaurant business, driven by the COVID-inspired trend towards take-out, will spawn a new popular mode of dining out:  couples, groups or families ordering take-out meals--possibly from multiple outlets--to eat at a separate location outside the home.  Eventually, some imaginative entrepreneur will establish "dine-in only" establishments, which provide pleasant environments and amenities for take-out diners--but no actual food.
  

Readers are of course invited to post their own predictions as comments, which we'll evaluate a year from now along with these...