It feels a bit funny to celebrate the end of 2009. It’s been a great year to be invested in Canadian capital markets. At the opening bell this morning, the S&P/TSX Composite index was up a stunning 29.38% year to date. But of course, 2009 will be remembered most for its unemployment rates, bankruptcies and shattered consumer confidence. All in all, there’s reason to celebrate a fresh start in January.

Before taking a blogging break for the holidays, here’s a list of my favourite quotes from 2009. Together, they serve as a kind of short-hand summary of the year. I’ll start with two biggies from the U.S. media.

The first was broadcast in September 2008, oddly enough. But its source, not to mention its prescience, qualifies it for our list. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that the economic downturn taking shape at that time was “a once-in-a-half-century, probably once-in-a-century type of event.” More than any other statement, that one alerted us to what lay ahead.

The second feels almost redundant now, but it was the clearest and most succinct analysis of where the economy was in March. “It’s fallen off a cliff,” said Warren Buffett to a CNBC host on March 9. He was talking specifically about the U.S. of course, but his comments were more than relevant around the world.

I’ve got a dozen favourites from the interviews I’ve conducted since we launched Today’s economy at the end of March. These are in chronological order:

• May 27. “You will stop traveling around the world. You’ll stop importing foods from halfway around the world. You’ll stop commuting 50 miles a day to work. You’ll start changing your diet. You won’t have an avocado salad in February in Toronto because the price of flying in that avocado makes that salad more costly than a filet mignon.” Jeff Rubin, author of Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, argued that the amount of global oil supplies that can be mined affordably will continue to drop, which will trigger inflation and a reversal of globalization.
• June 29. “It’s not a six sigma event. It’s not the black swan event. It’s not the end of the world. It’s a perfectly predictable event. The timing was never predictable, but you know you’re going to have times like this. So you should plan your strategy to accommodate it.” Frank Armstrong, author of Save Your Retirement: What to Do If You Haven’t Saved Enough or If Your Investments Were Devastated by the Market Meltdown, on the fundamentals of financial planning.
• July 13. “In terms of the Canadian dollar, I think we’re pretty optimistic. You certainly have a favourable government balance sheet. The Canadian dollar has rallied this year. We’re inclined to think that that’s going to continue.” Jack Ablin, of Harris Private Bank, on the loonie.
• July 15. “There’s a need for reciprocity, and that’s really what’s missing right now in the relationship between employers and employees. Employees feel that it’s one-sided. Employers expect a lot right now. There’s a lot of pressure in the workplace, and they have the feeling that they don’t get much in return.” JB Aloy, of Ipsos Reid, on the impact of this downturn on Canadian workers.
• August 5. “We’ll have economic growth but continued job loss, probably until the second quarter of next year.” Glen Hodgson, of The Conference Board of Canada, on the jobless recovery.
• August 13. “I just find it difficult to see the basis for a robust recovery. This is probably going to take quite a long time to work out. I regularly read things in the commercial real estate press, and from economic prognosticators, that are saying we could be into 2015 or 2016 before this stuff all gets itself sorted out. That may prove to be true.” Malcolm Musgrove, of Aurion Capital Management Inc. on the potential impact of the U.S. commercial real estate market on the global recovery.
• September 2. “I think markets are micro-efficient, but macro-inefficient. They’re rational internally. Everything is priced relative to each other in a rational way, if you compare one stock to another. It may be that pricing within the market has some rationality. But the overall direction of the market is not moored in the same degree of rationality. It’s hard to make a lot of money finding inefficiencies within the stock market, but the overall stock market can veer wildly off course.” David Adler, author of Snap Judgment, on why he says stock market investing is riskier than you think.
• September 30. “I think Canada becomes a huge beneficiary of the crisis because not only is America stalling a little bit, but Asia is rising, predominantly China. Canada is rising because Asia is rising. For everything that they need, whether it’s fertilizer for their fields, copper, gold, nickel, zinc, all the base metals, as well as oil and gas. They are the hammer in terms of demand. And they’re really the ones that have been driving those prices. So, through our resources, we’re really a world leader in that area.” John Stephenson, author of Shell Shocked: How Canadians Can Invest After the Collapse, shared his bullish view for our economy.
• October 14. “There’s only one direction for interest rates to go. The question is the timing and the aggressiveness of the future rise in rates. They certainly can’t go any lower.” Craig Alexander, of TD Economics, on the likelihood that rates will begin to rise in the second half of 2010.
• November 18. “There are two areas in Canada that are very conservative; one is banking and the other is residential development. We haven’t seen any over-activity in relation to the fundamentals.” Pedro Antunes, of The Conference Board of Canada, on the country’s non-existent housing bubble.
• December 2. “Based on present policies of borrowing more money and spending it and leaving the tax system in its present anti-labour condition, I expect we’ve reached what Keynes called ‘under-employment equilibrium.’ That’s another way of saying that unemployment will be 10% or more for the next several years.” Economist Mason Gaffney, of the University of California, on his pessimistic outlook for U.S. unemployment rates.
• December 21. “Nothing has worked out as the Federal Reserve has planned it. I do think that there’s a very significant risk of inflation at some point spiraling out of control. Whether that will happen in a year or two, I don’t know.” Axel Merk, author of Sustainable Wealth: Achieving Financial Security in a Volatile World of Debt and Consumption, on the potential downside of bailouts.

I’ll be back in January. Meantime, here’s to a happier new year.