It may be a new year, but there’s still a lot of unfin­ished eco­nomic busi­ness from 2011.

As 2012 gets under­way, investors should pay close atten­tion to two par­tic­u­lar unre­solved eco­nomic issues: High Ital­ian bond yields and the ongo­ing drama of the pay­roll tax holiday.

These two pieces of unfin­ished busi­ness are likely to dom­i­nate head­lines and influ­ence mar­kets dur­ing the first few months of this year. They both also could send the global econ­omy back into a reces­sion if they’re not solved ade­quately. What needs to hap­pen for these issues to be resolved? Here’s a quick look at some signs investors should watch for.

High Ital­ian bond yields. While Span­ish bond yields have retreated back toward 5%, Ital­ian bond yields remain stub­bornly close to 7%. Investors should watch the upcom­ing Ital­ian auc­tions for evi­dence of investor demand, which would help push down yields. In order to avoid a global reces­sion, Italy, and other South­ern Euro­pean coun­tries, must be able to con­tinue to fund their deficits at rea­son­able inter­est rates.

The ongo­ing drama of the pay­roll tax hol­i­day. In Decem­ber, the US gov­ern­ment extended both the US pay­roll tax hol­i­day and unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits for only two months as part of a last-minute com­pro­mise. In com­ing weeks, Con­gress must extend both of these pro­grams for the rest of the year or risk a poten­tial slow­down in con­sump­tion and the over­all US economy.

As for my eco­nomic expec­ta­tions for 2012 in gen­eral, stay tuned. I’ll be detail­ing my broader out­look in a post later this week.

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