Ask any economist where the economy is headed and you’re practically guaranteed a half-dozen conflicting and often hedged answers. Not this year.For 2006,the road map is clear. According to most economists, as well as the White House, we’re in for a pretty darn good year.

However, a challenge to this happy times scenario comes from a veteran economic soothsayer, Irwin Kellner, who figures the 2006 economy will falter because it’s riddled with land mines.

His chief worry, he tells me, is Helicopter Ben, better known as Ben Bernanke, the new skipper of the Federal Reserve.

Unlike many of his economic colleagues, who think the Fed’s current credit-tightening cycle has just about run its course, with perhaps one or two more interest rate hikes to go, Mr. Kellner, the chief economist at North Fork Bank, looks for at least another three rate hikes – one this month, another in March, and yet another in May. He sees each increase at 25 basis points, which would lift the fed funds rate to 5% in four months.

In effect, he says, “We’re marching toward monetary tightness and moving from a neutral level to a restrictive policy.” The Fed, he notes, is no longer going to be as accommodating as in the past. What’s more, he thinks there’s a real danger the Fed could overshoot its monetary policy and tip the economy into a recession.

In the first trading day of 2006, the Dow shot up 129 points with the release of minutes from a late 2005 Fed meeting that suggested the current cycle of credit tightening could be coming to an end. Mr. Kellner doesn’t believe it, observing that Mr. Bernanke will want to show his manhood by demonstrating he’s a dedicated inflation fighter. And that, he adds, surely increases the likelihood of a higher level of rates.

(Mr. Bernanke earned his Helicopter Ben nickname from comments he made in a speech in the early 2000s, advocating that the Fed do whatever it takes to combat deflation, including the use of the printing press to create an unlimited amount of money at no cost and dropping dollar bills from a helicopter.)

While most economists see slowing growth in the second half, they nonetheless peg this year’s GDP growth at a respectable 3.2% to 3.5%, versus last year’s estimated growth of 3.6% to 3.7%.

Mr. Kellner, though, believes “the odds are pretty good we will be in or close to a recession sometime in the latter half of the year.” Noting the economy is in the fifth year of expansion – which means, he says, “it’s approaching middle age” – he points out that once you pass four years, demand inevitably levels off and the economy becomes susceptible again.

But what happens, I asked Mr. Kellner, if he’s wrong about the Fed and it wraps up its short-term rate boosts, as some think might be the case, at 4.5%?

“We’ll still have an economic slowdown,” he says, “because the financial markets will throw a temper tantrum and raise rates on their own.”

Aside from his outlook for higher rates, Mr. Kellner’s expectations of a faltering 2006 economy factors in slower-than-expected job creation and income growth, falling home prices, higher energy costs, and huge debt.

What about the expected pickup in business spending? That’s only 12% to 15% of the economy, versus consumer spending, which has risen to 70% to 75% of the economy in the past three years, Mr. Kellner points out. Business spending, he adds, simply cannot pick up the torch.

So his outlook is for a mediocre economy at best this year, which, he notes, adds up to a mediocre stock market, to boot.

In contrast, Peter Morici, an economics professor at the University of Maryland and a member of the economic boards of Bloomberg and Reuters, views 2006 as a year of solid economic growth, with GDP rising 3.5% in the first half and slowing to the low 3% range in the second half.

That doesn’t sound bad, except he looks for the Fed to hike the fed funds rate 25 basis points to 4.5% later this month and then boost it again in March to 4.75%, a double-barreled move, he believes, that poses serious risk and which he thinks could provoke a recession.

“Anything above 4.5% is dangerous because you’ll make things more expensive for the consumer, who has basically been pushed to the hilt,” Mr. Morici says. He points in particular to such mounting consumer pressures as increasing credit card delinquencies, growing bankruptcies, rising mortgage rates, and high energy prices.

Another of the good professor’s economic concerns is the huge trade deficit. Foreigners, he fears, could stop shipping us all their cash, which in turn could push long-term rates sharply higher.

dandordan@aol.com