Ten predictions for the 2010 economy

6. Commodity prices will move sideways. That's another opinion from IHS Global Insight, based on its view of 2.8 percent GDP growth for the world economy (and 2.2 percent for the US). Even with China revving up to nearly 10 percent GDP growth, the firm doesn't see another commodity boom getting under way just yet.

7. Central banks will remain in "accelerator" mode. Manoj Pradhan and fellow analysts at Morgan Stanley say the Federal Reserve and many central banks will focus for some time on continuing to provide monetary fuel for recovery from recession, such as low short-term interest rates. "We expect the BBB (bumpy, below-par, boring) recovery ... to keep the AAA (ample, abundant, augmenting) liquidity regime in place for a while," Pradhan writes. But he adds that inflation risks will begin to resurface in both developed and developing nations.

8. A bear market in gold? Maybe not. Economist Ed Yardeni says that gold, often viewed as a hedge against inflation, tends to move in tandem with government debt levels. So if the economy recovers, will that bode well for tax receipts and poorly for gold? Mr. Yardeni, who runs a research firm in Great Neck, N.Y., says not to worry too much about a sudden return to fiscal health. An omnibus appropriations bill for 2010 is laden with earmarks for new spending, he notes.

9. The US will outpace Europe and Japan. This forecast, from Moody's Economy.com, is based on expectations that the US recovery will gradually gather self-sustaining momentum, clocking 5 percent annualized growth by late 2011 and then retreating back toward a more typical 3 percent pace by 2013. Japan, by contrast isn't seen getting its GDP growth above 2 percent for four years.

10. The rest of the US should take a page from Pennsylvania. OK, this is an observation, not a prediction. But economists at Wells Fargo Securities note that America's jobs problem is not just one of quantity. It's also the structure of where the jobs are in the economy. Some 2 million more manufacturing jobs have disappeared during the recession, and may not be coming back. Pennsylvania is a state once rich in manufacturing jobs that has increasingly been flexible enough to add education service-sector jobs to offset its losses. "Labor market weakness will persist for longer than we would like, but adjusting to new economic realities will smooth the transition from recession to recovery," write John Silvia and his colleagues at Wells Fargo.

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