Checking The Predictions For 2009

Last year CNN assembled some journalists and politicos to make predictions about what would happen in the year 2009. As promised in my blog post back then, we’ll check their predictions. Actually, they didn’t do too bad.

Of greater interest, I asked YOU to make your predictions. See how you did. My former student Cindy Ramos was prescient (I taught her so well):

In college football, Texas will once again defeat Oklahoma. They will also beat Texas Tech and everyone else on their schedule, putting them in the BCS title game. (I won’t predict the outcome of that game, since it won’t be played until 2010.) Colt McCoy will win the Heisman.

Except for that last sentence. There were some other seemingly unlikely predictions that came true. Get a load of this from Eric M:

No major terrorist attack will occur on US soil which will set the stage for a relaxing of many of the “security” measures put in place by President Bush. This will be a good thing overall. As the wars in Iraq and Afganistan wind down, the terrorists will have more freedom of movement leading to major events in 2010.

He had some other spot-on predictions, as did Jeff Samelson and others. Good prognosticating. There were, however, some misses. The world did NOT end because we elected Barack Obama president.

Here is an even bigger miss.

UPDATE: Jeff Samulsen predicted that the stock market, at the time in free fall, would go up by double digits by the end of the year, possibly, he said, as high as 20%. I just read that it had gone up 20%. Let Jeff manage your money, if you have any.