And the fall of the Aussie dollar arguably didn't help confidence levels either. Early in the year some vendors raised their prices as the Australian dollar had dropped by 25 per cent to the US greenback and 30 per cent against the Japanese Yen.

In short, with the continued bad news seeping out of Europe, Japan and the US, confidence in Australia seemed to be going south and a recession appeared imminent. At least that is what a lot of the public discourse -- especially in the mainstream media -- seemed to be indicating.

Yet, we never went into recession. Unlike our counterparts overseas, Australia's economy grew and continues to do so today. Some put it down to the Government's stimulus package, the Budget and other announcements like the plan to spend $43 billion on a National Broadband Network (NBN). Others said it was due to our exports to China, which was able to continue growing at a rapid rate and the strength of our banking system.

Now as the year draws to a close we have seen several of the country's ICT companies post strong gains on the ASX, the job market stabalise, the dollar rebound towards $US0.90, retail remain robust, large projects start to unfreeze with IT spending expected to be in the positive and general confidence in the economy and the ability of ICT to help drive growth start to soar again.

There are always ups and downs in any economy and varying views on the relative effects of different events on our fortunes, but the overarching influence of the global financial crisis on ICT spending, confidence, recruitment, planning and discourse this year was undeniably dramatic. It is for this reason the Computerworld Top 10 Most Influential 2009 panel selected it as our number four place getter.