Rod D. Martin's Economic Forecast for 2020 and Beyond

Barring some unforeseen catastrophe, 2020 should be a good year. It gets a lot more interesting thereafter.

by Rod D. Martin
January 1, 2020

It's a new decade, a new year, and an election year to boot, so lots of you have been asking me how I think the economy will fare in 2020. Many were surprised to see markets up a whopping 30% in 2019, particularly after their televisions told them that the world was ending in December 2018; and those same talking heads have been assuring us of imminent economic collapse since the moment Donald Trump was elected President. 

There are certainly reasons for concern about 2020, not least of which is the steady drumbeat that we must be concerned; and I would add that to the degree we are becoming immune to the media's self-serving prognostications, that is both very wise and itself cause for concern. Markets behave badly when people stop being concerned, and in the absence of any objectivity in reporting -- the major news sources have become nothing but corporate Super PACs for the Democrats -- this effect is, shall we say, unpredictable.

Nevertheless, I'm pret…