2009 Year in Review

There are thirty some hours left in the year 2009, so something momentous could still happen between now and the end of the year, but I take the risk and post this now. I'm not going to do a blow by blow review of the year. I'll do a quick overview of what I thought of 2009 and then post various reviews of the past year from different perspectives.

Personally, this was a pretty good year. We have our health. We survived the stock market meltdown and actually have recovered okay. As a nation things are not going quite as well. Unemployment is over 10% and still climbing. While it looks like the recession is winding down, the recovery is being slowed by the uncertainty over what legislation Washington may throw at us. Between the threatened health care "reform" and the looming danger of the Cap and Trade scam there is too much uncertainty going forward for any chance of small business hiring increasing. Politically, some would say that the Obama administration has not been the unmitigated disaster that was predicted (talk about damning with faint praise). In answer to that, I'd say wait a little bit. Damage caused by politicians is often not immediate. The economic troubles of the last couple years took decades to completely unravel. Biggest political news of the year in my opinion was the Tea Party push back against government growth and intrusion. I did not believe the Obama mystique would crumble as quickly as it has and it will be interesting to see if his poll numbers will continue to slide. Clearly he overplayed his hand. As a Cleveland sports fan, well lets just say this was not a year to remember and leave it at that.

Here are some Year in Review columns and other stuff:

Dave Barry's year in review: 2009. Always worth reading, Dave remembers things somewhat stuff differently.

Politico.com reviews the year in politics. Slight left leaning, but it is useful to understand the oppositions point of view.

Investopedia re-runs some of their top stories from the past year.

From WTMJ of Madison, Wisconsin we get the Top Weird Stories.

2009 Sports Year in Review.

YAHOO's Top Ten Searches of 2009

CNN's Year in Review. Pretty comprehensive look back.


Finally, we get the annual JibJab review: