2009 financial predictions

With the bruises from 2008’s housing/energy/financial-market haymakers still aching, who are we to turn to for reliable scouting reports in order to better protect ourselves? Brokers? Banks? OPEC? Alan Greenspan?!? How about computers? The Financial Forecast Center (www.forecasts.org) features free monthly average forecasts for the next six months in the areas of economics, employment and investments, among other things. From the site: “All forecasts are generated in-house using artificial intelligence. The forecast models are 100-percent quantitative and use a global, long-range economic dataset.” Yeah! Cold, soulless machines will rescue my 401(k)! If the numbers hold up, the next six months will be a little wobbly, but not devastating. That is, until the Alt-A mortgage resets start piling up and things go bonkers again …

Sources: NYSE, NYMEX, Google Finance, HousingPredictor.com and The Financial Forecast Center.