Housing: Overall, prices to stagnate due to increased sales on the low end and “sticky on the way down” for higher.
Jobs: Biotech to fluctuate with layoffs, but hiring by others. Technology the same as biotech. Bricks & mortar engineering to pick back up in the end of the year driving large project construction in 2010. Services to get hit driving unemployment % up a couple for everything. Healthcare to stay strong (my back hurts). Local and State Govt will hurt. Defense spending gets pulled back impacting 2010. If you have a job, keep it and don’t look. If you are graduating, stay in school another year.
Oil: Float around $40 +/- 10 till the end of the year (about that long for biogasification and other creative renewables initiatives to get put on the back burner). Then magically up to 80-100 and here we go again.
Gold: I thinkg my mining company certificates from the ’20s are useless, but they look cool.
$ vs Euro: Euro drift down, USD drift up. They are struggling too.
Final thoughts: Daughter getting married to a fine young man, son graduating HS and going to college, my job is fun and secure, youngest daughter does not plan to get hurt in gymnastics, only get kicked out of one house because the owner we are leasing from is in foreclosure and wife continues to pressure to buy but understands. Things are looking up!
