What will be in the mix for '06? To climb inside the crystal ball, I've sought assistance from a group of local advisers, who graciously discussed what lies ahead in phone interviews.

I perused the traditional forecasts appearing in various publications over the past few weeks and drew on my own experiences.

What follows comes with no money-back guarantee. You know how these forecasts go. Surprises invariably happen to topple even the best-researched forecasts. Here goes:

Enron Saga

One-time Enron bosses Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, the leading black hats in Corporate America's scandal of scandals, will be found guilty. Their trial on fraud and conspiracy charges is scheduled to begin this month in Houston. Much of the media will portray their trip to prison as a defining moment — the end of the era of corporate scandals that began with the crash of Enron late in 2000.

But the scandals won't end. They'll just take on new forms, often quite creative and increasingly global in nature.

3M and George Buckley

It's tough to guess how 3M will fare with Wall Street under new CEO George Buckley, but

what's for sure is he's playing well with employees and retirees. Buckley's honeymoon is likely to stretch at least into early spring, when he has promised more details on his plans for the company.

Credit much of this good feeling to a savvy move by the company's directors. When former CEO James McNerney suddenly decided last July to ship out for the top job at Boeing, the board dispatched fellow director Robert Morrison to the 3M campus in Maplewood as interim CEO. Morrison made a point of hearing from the rank and file. That enabled him to readily tap into the concerns of many 3M researchers that McNerney pressed them to push products out to the market too quickly, at the expense of developing the longer-term, bigger-revenue products that gave 3M its well-earned reputation as one of those "built to last" companies.

Then, in one of his first acts at 3M, former Brunswick chief Buckley sent an e-mail to all employees praising Morrison but not mentioning the McNerney regime.

One of the big Twin Cities business stories to watch this year: How well Buckley can balance the pressures of Wall Street for short-term performance with the need for 3M to grow more internally, through the lasting innovation that has been so critical to its successes over the years.

The U.S. economy has proven itself to be amazingly resilient. It just keeps shaking off the impact of awful events — the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the stock market swoon of 2000-02, last year's spike in oil prices. It's safe to say more bad things will happen in 2006, but the bet here is that economy will continue to do reasonably well. Maybe not quite as much growth in 2005, but somewhere around 3 percent.

No crash seems likely here or in most of the country, but don't bet on another big year for appreciation in the value of your house. Those days are probably gone for a while, in great part because of rising interest rates. Also, watch for a mounting attack on "exotic mortgages," one of the factors fueling the surge in housing prices. Last month, U.S. Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan offered a glimpse of what's in store for the easy money crowd when he unveiled guidelines designed to curb the growing use of low-interest or no-interest mortgages.

Large businesses, worried about their sagging standing with the public, will work harder to shore up their reputations.

Bill Morris, founder and CEO of the Decision Resources survey firm in Minneapolis, sees at least three such efforts gathering momentum in 2006: more corporate philanthropy tied to branding of products and services; better crisis management; more accent on institutional advertising such as those Wal-Mart ads featuring satisfied employees.

Morris knows something about those declining reputations. Every year since 1990, he has asked a random sample of 625 Minnesotans to rate the large Minnesota corporations and, separately, rate large U.S. corporations in terms of their conduct of business.

In 1990, 68 percent of the respondents rated the Minnesota companies positively and 18 percent negatively. By 2004, the ranking was 46 percent positive and 40 percent negative.

The U.S. corporations get poorer grades. In 1990, 59 percent were seen as positive and 32 percent negative; in 2004, 41 percent positive and 50 percent negative.

Morris calls the better rankings for local companies "the Minnesota dividend," but he notes that that dividend is shrinking. In 2004, Minnesota companies got the higher positive ranking by a margin of 5 percentage points over their U.S. counterparts, about half the gap that they enjoyed in 1990.

Why is this happening? Morris cites cutbacks in benefits as a major factor. Others cite a sense of unfairness — flat or falling median income, paired with hefty paydays for top executives and financial engineers.

Lynn Casey, head of the Padilla Speer Beardsley public relations firm in Minneapolis, adds another reason: technology and the media. Blogging on the Internet, talk shows and 24-hour cable news operations have given Americans more opportunities to vent against corporations and other institutions.

Northwest Airlines