[IMGCAP(2)]Leupp addressed a crowd of more than 1,000 inDowntown Los Angeles on Tuesday morning, where he and a group ofpanelists provided some realistic insight for 2010. The bad news isthat there are still some significant headwinds due to consumerdebt and a tremendous amount of government debt, said Hessam Nadji,managing director of research services at Marcus & Millichap."But there is a lot of positive news," he added. "The evidence ofthe actual recovery keeps piling up…This will be a staging and atransitional year."

Dr. Sam Chandan, global chief economist and executive vicepresident of Real Capital Analytics, explained that one of hismajor concerns looking forward is government intervention. "It isunclear if there is enough consumer confidence without governmentintervention to sustain the kind of growth that will drive newemployment," he said. But the more immediate concern, he said, "isthe way that we balance or do not balance budgets in the US."

No one knows what is going to happen going forward, said StephenCauley, director of research at the Richard S. Ziman Center forReal Estate at UCLA, who worries about the world's financialmarkets, policy risks and global risks. Cauley considered the otherpanelists a bit too optimistic, noting: "We still have asubstantially long period of recovery ahead of us."