In my most recent question column earlier this week, I asked for readers' predictions for the upcoming year ... aside from Genghis bravely predicting that Obama would become POTUS, I didn't get too many responses.

So I'm going to ask for your predictions again, while repeating some of the predictions I made and adding a couple of more, before I revisit some calls I made this year.

First, the predictions for 2009. I'm sticking mostly to economics, with a few foolish forays into other areas (I was going to make a call that Prophet would finish his Top 10 2008 Albums list next February, but I see now he's picked up the pace):

Economy [Read more]

It was Sept. 18. Lehman Brothers had just gone belly-up, overwhelmed by toxic mortgages. Bank of America had swallowed Merrill Lynch in a hastily arranged sale. Two days earlier, Mr. Bush had agreed to pump $85 billion into the failing insurance giant American International Group. The president listened as Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, laid out the latest terrifying news: The credit markets, gripped by panic, had frozen overnight, and banks were refusing to lend money. Then his Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., told him that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history. Mr. Bush, according to several people in the room, paused for a single, stunned moment to take it all in. [Read more]

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I believe in balance. In yin and yang. I believe in cycles. In symmetry. I believe big wild parties end with big, nasty hangovers. I believe that what goes up, must come down.

Unfortunately, our government does not agree.

I have railed time and time again on this blog about the scattershot and shortsighted nature of our economic response so far to the current financial crisis. In short, and with few exceptions, said strategy has consisted of spending as much money as possible to bailout and stimulate every sick, depressed segment of our economy, with a particular focus on those segments that cater to the rich and connected. [Read more]

To bail or not to bail, that is the question,
whether tis nobler for Detroit to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageously high unemployment
Or to guarantee huge loans against a sea of debt,
And by paying them off end them?
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Japan's economy is now officially in recession according to those in charge of labeling such things, which means that they beat us again. While most believe that the U.S. has already entered a recession, it's not official until we have two consecutive quarters of negative growth, so we're just going to have to wait until January. Thus, despite the fact that Japan's auto companies run circles around the befuddled behemoths in Detroit and clobbered our electronics companies long ago, even though Japanese save like misers and Americans spend like sailors, and notwithstanding our $5B trade deficit with Japan, they still out-recessioned us. [Read more]

Who'dathunk we'd end up in this mess when folks like Peter here were being celebrated two years ago?

Warning: Don't watch on the computer you'd hate to see a fist put through

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It's bad enough the government will soon be doling out billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out the bloated, mismanaged U.S. auto industry.

But please, please, do not give any of that money to the nation's car dealers.

According to a Yahoo story, an auto bailout package is likely to pass in large part because of pressure from the American auto dealership lobby. Even worse, a spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Association says he wants dealers to get some of that money. [Read more]

The day after Obama won the election, a Republican friend of mine on Facebook joined a group that planned on getting together on Inauguration Day to mourn 'The End of Capitalism as We Know It'*.

Members of the group were waxing bitter in the message board, complaining about how Obama was a socialist who was going to destroy the U.S. economy.

I had to laugh ... and cry.

Cry because these people were so caught up in their own right-wing economic philosophies (many of which I actually agree with) that they couldn't even for one moment take the time to appreciate the historical significance of what this country's voters had just done. [Read more]

While many of us have spent the last week exulting about bringing President Obama from notion to fruition, the overwhelming reality of this moment in time is not the joy that justifiably comes with that election, it is the knowledge that the economy really, really sucks, and the deep concern for the jobs and well-being of others or of ourselves that goes with that. In ways, this doesn't seem like other recessions. It seems deeper, and more serious. Here are some random things I'm seeing that make this time seem special, in a crappy way: [Read more]

Today I read an article on the Web that I wanted to share because it jibes pretty much perfectly with my vision of the near future for this country, particularly in relation to its economic, social and political status. It's not a pretty picture. But it's what I see ahead. [Read more]

I've had it.

This country has been on engorging on a cheap credit binge for the last decade, stuffing itself on the sugar highs and empty calories provided by ultra-low interest rates and fancy derivatives and zero-down mortgages. Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and everyone is looking for a way to get their butt saved. [Read more]

You hear a lot of conservatives nowadays wanting to place blame for the country's current economic crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which encouraged commercial banks to lend money to borrowers in low-income areas.

The implication is that the CRA, enacted and significantly expanded under two different Democratic administrations, led to the creation and proliferation of the risky subprime mortgages that have brought the U.S. banking system to the brink of collapse. [Read more]

OK, so I was a day or two early with my short-term bottom and violent rally call, but it's party time on Wall Street today with the markets almost up double digit percentages. (Uh, now more than double digits ...) [Read more]

Damn, I thought I was going out on a limb when I called for a violent (though short-lived) rally to the upside. But if the press and the pundits who speak their mind in the press are any indication, that's a very crowded limb.

I've been watching CNBC A LOT for the past few days, and it seems like nearly everyone is looking at this crash as a great buying opportunity, telling people not to panic, saying a bottom is at hand and a violent rally is on its way. [Read more]

I think we're about to get a much-needed reminder that stock markets don't always go down.

Could happen today, could happen tomorrow, and it may or may not happen after one last big selloff, but we're going to get a relief rally very soon. I don't expect it to last long, but I do expect it to be rather violent and dramatic. Maybe we get back close to 11,000 on the Dow. [Read more]

So, the market is down 555 points, almost 5 percent. Yet so far this is no October Black Monday, like when the market dropped 13 percent on October 28th, 1929 or when it dropped 22% on October 19, 1987. (Note: Things are moving fast, market down another 100 points since I started writing).

This is, in many ways, even worse - just another Gray Monday, where we get the continued, orderly drip-drip-drip of a market with no confidence, and no idea of where we are headed. [Read more]

So yesterday I wrote about how the Senate was making the bailout plan bigger but not better in order to get reluctant legislators aboard.

Oh man, you have no idea. It makes me want to cry.

According to the WSJ, A bill that was originally 3 pages is now more than 400 pages. Among the useless 'sweeteners' tacked onto the plan: [Read more]

So now the Senate is going to try its hand at passing a bailout plan. [Read more]

OK, I was wrong. Really wrong. I was sure politicians would approve this bailout bill, no matter how publicly unpopular it was. The short-term risks of not doing something seemed too enormous - a complete freeze of the credit markets and the subsequent collapse of the economic system that relies so heavily on that free flow of credit. [Read more]

OK, the market's up big. The bailout plan is about to be unveiled. What does it all mean? Here are my thoughts.

  [Read more]