If you've been reading me this year, you know I have made a few highly contrarian calls that turned out to be correct. Most importantly, that after picking up early in the year, demand destruction during the recession that I already believed was happening, would cause inflation to fade strongly later in the year. As a corollary to that, when others were counting the days until $130 a barrel oil would hit $200, I called it a top, and started a Countdown to $100 Oil that turned out to be too tame! I also was among the first on the blogosphere to note that China's bubble was bursting and that the recession would go global, and that the markets feared deflation.

But there is one call I made over a year ago which now can be given a well-deserved burial: the notion that there would be a "respite" in the ongoing "slow motion bust" at some point before the end of 2008.