Given the uncertainty of the economy, some families are cutting back for Christmas, and not even the trees have been spared, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. People are so worried about money that Myrna Lou Goldbaum, a palm reader from Longmont, has seen a rise in requests for financial forecasts, a change from the good times, when there was more curiosity about romance, according to Boulder’s Daily Camera. Colorado Springs economist Tucker Hart Adams is predicting the same as everyone else: recession. And it will probably last throughout 2009, writes the Denver Business Journal. There is some good news, however.

Home foreclosures are likely to have declined by 13 percent this year, ending two successive years of increases. And, as the Journal notes in another story, Colorado’s restaurant sales are expected to increase by the third-largest amount in the nation. Still, the state is “preparing to make painful budget cuts” amid a $604 million budget shortfall, according to Face the State.