THE CALENDAR IS AN ARTIFACT, a 12-month period unrelated to the fundamental movements in the U.S. and world economies. For that reason, and because so many others feel confident enough to offer detailed and precise forecasts of what is in store for us in 2007, I am inclined to leave such chores to economists willing to provide guidance to those who need such information to help them earn their daily bread by trading, making, and selling. After all, if the much-experienced vice chairman of the Fed, Donald Kohn, can say, "We are uncertain about where the economy has been, where it is now, and where it is going," I can certainly be forgiven for not adding still another detailed annual forecast to the many already before you. If some take this as an excuse for vagueness, so be it.

We are coming off a 12-month run that can best be described as the tale of two economies--the hot one in the first half of the year (growth at 5.6 percent and 2.6 percent in the first and second quarters), and the cooler one in the last half (2 percent in the third quarter and perhaps about that in the final quarter, although some economists are, with good reasons, predicting a bounce-back to a 2.7 percent rate in the fourth quarter of last year). On average, not bad, but then again a person can drown in a river with an average depth of four feet, which is what some property speculators loaded with Florida condominiums are doing as mortgage payments on unsold and unrented flats come due.

The slower pace of the next 12 months will feel especially uncomfortable, more than merely cooler, after our long period of rather torrid growth--like going out into a not particularly cold day directly from a hot tub. But because economies don't organize themselves in 12-month cycles, I am inclined to look forward to 2007 as just what the doctor ordered, a correction of imbalances, as painful as a tooth extraction, but with great relief once the procedure is completed.

FOR A LONG TIME economists have worried about imbalances: too much consumer spending, based on too much debt; an unsustainable U.S. trade balance as the American consumer shored up the world economy by snapping up the output of developed and developing economies; imbalance between high- and lower-earners; and an imbalance between American foreign policy commitments and the forces available to carry them out.

The year that we enter is one in which these imbalances will begin to unwind, leaving a healthier world economy in place. Consumers are no longer riding the wave of steadily rising house prices, which seem to be falling (the data are too imperfect to permit firm conclusions: houses withdrawn from sale because of low or no offers are not included in average price data) and are likely to fall still more--by 1.7 percent according to the consensus of BusinessWeek's 58 forecasters, or by 3 percent if you are a fan of Goldman Sachs's economists, or by 5 percent to 10 percent if the housing bears are right in predicting that potential home buyers will hibernate in 2007--with wide regional variations in performance. That fall, if it occurs, as seems likely, must be weighed against the doubling of prices that has enriched households in the past seven years, and the offsetting record level of share prices (up about 10 percent this year, as measured by the S&P 500-share composite) that will add to the wealth of many householders.