Brandtism

For what it's worth, here are my predictions for 2010:
1. The world and our economy is going to get uglier............the crushing debt will impact everything. The market has been propped up but this will end. Stocks are a bad bet.....I still say that the Dow will get down to 5500. Cash is king and gold is good. Bonds are also problematic. Hunker down, save all that you can; house fixing and improvement is a good investment......not for value improvement but for personal use and comfort.

2. Believe it or not.....real estate will get worse. As leases expire, malls and commercial property will get darker. Atlanta has 12 year supply of office property and 20% vacancy now.
More stores will start to close after the January/February sales are over............ Dept. store chains like Dillards, Macy's will start to consolidate stores believing that they can serve a metro area with 6 stores instead of 12..... In residential property, Fanny and Freddy are disasters.......they will end up as government entities as will most of the banks. Residential remains ugly.

3. Health care bill will pass.....in some form.....since the costs begin immediately and the benefits for the most part come in 3-4 years, Dems will suffer big losses in 2010. May not be enough to shift control but the big trigger will be jobs. Another stimulus will not happen and all the state government jobs that were created will be eliminated since the state cannot afford to maintain them. Unemployment will worsen...but the statisitics will not reflect it. There are too many not included in the metrics. Dems will try to extend unemployment comp which is already at 99 weeks. That won't help. Dems won't do what is needed to create jobs........suspend withholding.....eliminate capital gains.....the far left won't permit it. 50% of the people will not be paying any taxes at all.

4. Lots of trade wars........it will get ugly with China............on the plus side, we'll see a resurgence of small business manufacturing and entrepreneurship.......great time to start a business. This will cause prices to rise but I don't see oil increasing too much.

5. Terrorism is a terrible threat......the politics of Gitmo and Holder have their impact on our entire security infrastructure......terrorists think we are weak.....and our own people will say "what's the point?" If anything will impact the next election, this and immigration will be the levers. Some jihadist will cross the border and commit a terrorist act and all of a sudden, we'll realize we are vulnerable. Combine this with the fact that illegals taking jobs will create another backlash.

6. Iran issues will be resolved either because they change internally (low probability) or the world steps in because Russia and China figure out that if Israel goes to war with Iran, everybody will get involved. And.....we do have 200,000 military close to the Iranian border.

Hopefully, what could evolve this year is movement of the right to the center from their ridiculous social agenda and movement of the left to the center as they find that they can't get reelected engaging in similarily insane agendas like "cap and trade" and higher taxes. Perhaps we'll start to get some centrist consensus.