It’s that time again, when all of the pundits and analysts weigh in with their predictions for the new year, and, as we leave “the aughts” behind, the new decade. The past two weeks have been chockablock with best of/worst of ’09 lists, events of the year, people of the year, etc. (Time magazine’s choice for Person of the Year for 2009, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, actually ties in very nicely with Futures’ January Markets piece, “Interest rate policy: Under pressure.”) The consensus among many pundits is that the coming decade HAS to be better than the one we’re leaving behind.

In an excellent column in the New York Times, Paul Krugman suggested that from an economic standpoint, the past decade should be referred to as “The Big Zero.”  ”It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true,” Krugman writes, citing zero job creation and zero economic gains for the typical family.

In a press release from my inbox, Leon Labrecque, the managing partner and founder of LJPR, LLC, predicted we will ride a “positive wave” economically in the next decade, citing the potential for new business creation. “The last ten years have undoubtedly been a decade of crisis upon crisis. On the other hand, you have reports showing us how many entrepreneurs have risen up through this recession,” Leon said. Just one example of an analyst saying the next decade can’t be much worse than this one.

Futures will weigh in with its annual Best of/Worst of list, “Tops and Bottoms,” in our February issue. We’re compiling the biggest high notes and low notes from the year and the decade in the futures industry. So stay tuned…

Tags: Ben Bernanke, Economic outlook, economy, New York Times

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under General, economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.