The Pros See The Glass as Half Empty...or Is it Half Full?

A Money Magazine writer asked ten well-respected economists and managers of money funds to give their forecasts for the economy and the stock market in 2009. The answers were all over the place, but the consensus was that they saw the optimum score on the economy as 3-5 out of a possible 10. (The glass was half empty.) Some of their predictions: The GDP will either remain flat for the year, or at least for the first half of 2009, the unemployment rate will peak at 8% by the end of the year. But they also guessed that the consumer price index would grow by 2.1% by year's end, and that the 30 year fixed rate mortgage rate might hit a low of 5%.
As for the stock market, predictions were more optimistic. The scores ranged from 5.5% to 9%. (The glass is half full.) They estimated a rise in the S&P 500 to anywhere from 1000 to nearly 1200, and for the Dow to hit 12,500 by the end of the year. One prediction was a gain of up to 30% from October's lows. They all see this as the time to buy equities.