I'll repost my predictions from last week, before the stock market rallied this week:
There is a decent chance you will see positive GDP growth in Q3 2009. I will be simply amazed if you don't see positive GDP growth in Q4 2009. Q2 2009 GDP growth will be negative, likely in the -2-4% range.
Unemployment will likely remain high, once again a relative term since by many standards you could argue it is actually much lower than it could have been, until the end of 2009. Unemployment may start decreasing by the end of the year, but unemployment is particularly difficult to predict. Unemployment will start dropping by Q1 2010.
The stock market will likely start rising after the Q2 earnings reports come out, maybe during if Q2 earnings meet or beat analyst expectations. The stock market can be particularly volatile though. I would estimate the DOW will be over 9000 by the end of the year, the highest I would predict it could go is 10000. It is highly unlikely the DOW will dip back below 7000 or even 7500.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
