Neither talk of a housing bubble nor high energy costs are enough to shake Carl Tannenbaum’s optimism about the U.S. economy for 2006. Speaking to a large crowd at last week’s annual Economic Forecast Forum, the senior vice president and chief economist of LaSalle Bank Corp. in Chicago downplayed those potential threats to the economy and said, “We expect the economy will grow at about the same pace as last year, and it could in fact be better than last year.”

A regular speaker at the event, Tannenbaum noted that Americans’ savings and investments have earned hefty returns over the past 15 or 20 years, and at the same time their home equity has increased tremendously.

Referring to Naples, Fla., as a community often cited as being in danger of experiencing a collapse in real estate prices, Tannenbaum said the Baby Boomers are “the wealthiest generation we’ve ever had in America, and a lot of them are able to buy a retirement home before selling their house up north. So we have the two rules of supply and demand intersecting to drive prices up. Is that a bubble? Naples is a popular place, and it’s natural to think the demand for property would be higher there.”

Economists, Tannenbaum said, have predicted “nine of the last two bubbles.”

“It’s our feeling that housing will not crash,” he said, “but if you’re waiting for housing prices to go up 10 percent this year, you’ll probably be disappointed.”

As for the energy situation, “Last year, my wife needed smelling salts to revive me when we got our January heating bill,” he joked. “This year, she needed defibrillator paddles.”

Americans are adjusting to the jump in energy prices, he said, noting that the automobile on deepest back order is the high-mileage, gas-electric hybrid Toyota Prius and predicting that some in the audience will check for insulated hot-water pipes the next time they buy a house.

The one area of concern, Tannenbaum said, is the escalating cost of health care. With the first wave of Baby Boomers nearing retirement, he said, that generation’s Medicare costs could hit $70 trillion.

“General Motors and Ford have retirement systems that look strikingly like our Social Security and Medicare programs, and the costs are eating them from the inside,” he said. “Ask your politicians to have a good, decent dialogue about this, because our children’s future depends on it.”

Tannenbaum expressed confidence in Ben Bernanke, President Bush’s nominee to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and had high praise for Greenspan’s accomplishments in taming U.S. inflation.

He dismissed worries about the flat yield curve on bonds – long-term interest rates are virtually the same as short-term rates – which is seen by some as a warning of recession. Instead he called it an “indicator of strength.”

Tannenbaum also said, “There are 100 billion reasons we’re not going to have a recession — that’s the number of dollars the government will spend to rebuild the areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina. When we walk into the polling places next November, we all will have forgotten the scenes from New Orleans and the Superdome, and that’s very positive for the economy in 2006.”