Fasten your seat belts!(2011 FORECAST) (Brief article)

• Author: Heffes, Ellen M.

Hopes for a rosy 2010 failed to materialize, or leave everyone shouting "happy days are here again." While there was some noticeable progress over the past year, the new year begins with 17 percent of the U.S. workforce out of work or seriously underemployed as unemployment hovers at nearly 10 percent for a record 19 months. Too many houses are unsold or not being started--although October brought a surprising uptick in sales--and too many smaller businesses are unable to grow--due to economic uncertainty or inability to get financing, although corporate coffers were said to be flush with nearly $2 trillion.

Survey after survey shows some tempered optimism going into the new year. But while segments of the economy and some nations around the world were humming last year, there remains globally what The Economist Economics Editor Zanny Minton-Beddoes characterized at FEI's Current Financial Reporting Issues conference in November as a "deep sense of malaise."

There is still a long, long way to go for the United States economy to reach a full-fledged rebound.

Will 2011 continue in upward...