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 [2]. 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 [3]. 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 [4]. 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 [5] 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 [6].