By Chuck Green

By Chuck Green
knight ridder/tribune
DENVER -- It's been more than four years since terrorists collapsed the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the gleaming symbols of capitalism and commerce casting their shadows on Wall Street.
Since then there has been a budget-busting war effort to fight the Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia and Europe. There has been one of the most horrific natural disasters of modern generations, a tsunami that left an estimated 200,000 dead and countless millions injured and homeless, and entire nations staggering under badly damaged economies. And then, to cap off this unrelenting parade of bad news, there was the devastating hurricanes along America's Gulf Coast.
Yet the U.S. economy remains relatively robust and consumer confidence seems to be running high.
Two gloomy scenarios
There seems to be only two possible catastrophes that could derail this economic express in 2006 -- another terrorist attack on the homeland similar in scope to the WTC tragedy, or a sudden bust of the American housing bubble.
As the average home cost in California hits the half-million mark, and housing costs in many other states approach that ridiculous level, there has to be a jolting adjustment sometime in the future. When it comes, families will see their six- and seven-figure equities vanish, bankruptcies and foreclosures will skyrocket, investors will scramble and the construction industry will get nailed.
There is a chance that 2006 will be the year, but there is no certainty.
There is no certainty either that terrorists will strike a major blow to the homeland in the coming year, but there is no reason to think that 2006 will carry with it some immunity from such a blow.
Bumps along the way
Absent those two occurrences, the new year ought to be an economically healthy one. That isn't to say, however, that we can't expect some speed bumps along the way to make things interesting.
The country will have to adjust to a new chief of the Federal Reserve Board and his particular policies. The cost of health care and insurance certainly will continue to outgain the nation's cost-of-living index, as Congress manages yet again to avoid finding any solution to that massive and growing problem. Energy prices will keep a throttle on family budgets.
But none of those factors alone, and several of them in concert, won't be enough to significantly send America's economy into a tailspin.
It is a tribute to the nation's economic vitality and strength that it not only has been able to stand firmly after the shock of 9/11 -- which upset the financial markets, nearly bankrupted the airline and tourism industries, and shook consumer confidence to its core -- but has survived the other major challenges of the last four years as well.
It is equally instructive to note that weathering these storms has been without much assistance by Congress on its pressing -- but largely unaddressed -- economic agenda.
Plenty of inaction
There has been no progress on simplifying the country's Byzantine tax code, no progress on solving the health-care dilemma, no movement toward putting Social Security on a solvent course, no fix for the illegal immigration problem, and no turn in the uncontrolled spiral of deficit spending. Just imagine how much better things would be if, for only a year or two, Congress would provide an honest day's work and resolve some of the problems that are out of reach of common Americans.
But what are the chances of that happening? Certainly not in 2006.
X Chuck Green is former editor of The Denver Post. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services