Well here it is 2001. I hope everyone of you had a nice holiday season to relax and recharge your batteries. We all lived through the first year of a new millennium, even though many were convinced that Y2K would terminate us all.
Now that we have a president officially certified by the Electoral College, we need to only worry about the economy and what it is up to. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan did not raise or lower the rates at the last meeting of the Federal Reserve Bank, so the stock market only has itself to blame for its up and down movement.
Personally, I believe the economy will come in at year’s end about where it did in 2000. The market will continue to fluctuate like a high blood pressure gauge, but overall the economy will be strong in most industries.
For more than five years we have partnered with Deloitte & Touche LLC to survey the same thousand or so businesses every year to get a true handle , not Wall Street’s version , of what each of them is planning on growth, new hires and new sales. It is an excellent snapshot of our economy locally and how the front-line CEO feels.
This entire issue is a Preview of the Year 2001, not a forecast or an economist’s view. The stories in the issue are follow-ups to the survey data provided by Deloitte & Touche. We want to thank the team at Deloitte for partnering with us on this project for so many years.
I hope that this year brings each and every one of you the rewards and success for which you are striving.