The future remains as fundamentally unpredictable as it has always been. Oh yes, waiting for 2014. And we still are. No, obviously, not in the straight calendar sense. New Year's day has long come and gone. But in the broader sense, of what will - more honestly, might - unfold this year. For the economy. For investments. For business. For jobs. Three weeks in, the answers remain as elusive as they were in the closing days of 2013. Three words though, spring immediately to mind. The obvious one: unpredictable. But also, that the year will assuredly be challenging. Anyone who thinks that "happy days are here again" is delusional. Yet at the same time, that very combination of unpredictability and challenge, together with the relentless reality of continual sweeping change, will generate huge opportunities. Think Apple. Think Google. And Sensis. This though has been given an added edge since the global financial crisis in 2008. Pre-2008 we had the relative predictability of, crudely, cyclical booms and busts - moderated almost uniquely for Australia, by almost two decades of uninterrupted sustained growth and ever-rising asset (property and shares) values. That easy "predictability" has gone forever. We've now got cyclical and multiple structural waves rolling over and colliding with each other, plus the uncertain consequences of the actions taken by governments and most particularly central banks to avoid a post-GFC replay of the Great Depression of the 1930s. All those remain in the "making" of 2014. With one big new factor - we are now embarked on the UNWINDING of those stimulatory actions. The Fed - the US Federal Reserve, their version of our Reserve Bank - is now formally embarked on its "taper"; the graduated unwinding of QE, its quantitative easing, or more colloquially, money-printing exercise. This was the Great Experiment to forestall the Great Deflation and potentially a Great Depression. So will the unwinding prove to be a post-GFC version of former Fed head Alan Greenspan's reference to 'snatching away of the punchbowl as the party warms up? If removing the "punchbowl," ladle by ladle, agonisingly slowly over a year or so, can be described as "snatching away." Or are we going to find out that it's more an exercise in removing life-support? So the patient - the US economy - goes back into cardiac arrest, or else it's hurriedly restored. The answer is absolutely critical to not just how the year does unfold, but to its - marginal - predictability. Because what the Fed is likely to do, provides one of the two islands of predictability in the, turbulent, ocean of uncertainty. The real significance of the decision by Ben Bernanke's Fed - to kick-off the taper at its last meeting just before Christmas, has gone largely unappreciated. Arguably, because it was largely interpreted as the Fed just belatedly 'correcting' its mistake to not start the taper at its September meeting, when "everyone" expected it. In fact it delivered two critically important messages. The first was that the taper was just as much "Yellen's taper" as Bernanke's. That his presumably more dovish successor, Janet Yellen - who takes over at the end of this month - was fully signed on to the 'punchbowl/life support removal. But more critically and more subtly, it told us just exactly what she had "signed on to." In my judgment, a replay of what the Fed did, removing its first bout of extraordinary - bubble-creating - stimulus after 9/11. Back then it set about raising its official rate by 0.25 per cent at each and every meeting, taking it from 1 per cent to 5.25 per cent. This time around, it will cut back its QE by $10 billion a month, at each and every (six-weekly) meeting. The Fed like all bureaucracies is a creature of habit. It would see this, as it did in the 2004-06, as delivering "certainty." Further, importantly, it would also be "intending" to move seamlessly, once the QE was back to zero, to then lifting its official rate. The other island of certainty is our Reserve Bank. For the foreseeable future it will leave its official rate unchanged at 2.5 per cent. Unless and until 'something changes' big time. It would like to see the Aussie dollar somewhat lower, closer to US80c than US90c. But will be quite relaxed if its stays in the high-80s. It is expecting the Fed's taper to gratuitously take the US dollar up. Beyond these certainties, such as they are, we should still prepare for a challenging year. Even if the 'big things' go more or less smoothly. The US economy does pick up, China keeps growing strongly, if just not as strongly as before. We pick up relief from a lower Aussie dollar and the resources investment cliff proves to be more of a long decline. This applies even for the great success stories in the seemingly high growth sectors. Google might have killed Sensis, but is a new giant-killer already growing out there. That should remind us that in living through a time of great - arguably, the greatest - flux, we are also living in a time of extraordinary opportunity. There are thus two ways to look at 2014. To be defensive, to put up the shutters against the - very real, very large, very significant - uncertainties. Or to see them as offering once-in-lifetimes opportunities. Importantly, this applies just as much at the national level as for individual companies and investors.