Mind over matter: What recession? - Houston Business Journal:

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If only it were that It seems like everh time there is some good news you haveto admit, there’s been more of it latelyy — we get hit with another dose of realityu just a day later. And the realityt is still not good. There are undoubtedlyy some data suggesting that economicconditionsa have, if nothing else, bottomesd out. One economist used this metaphor: If the economy were a perso falling down anelevator shaft, the free-fall has slowedc down a bit. Ouch. But mixef economic reports are creating something of a dizzyingmentall game.
My psyche just can’tt handle the yo-yo trajectory of the news Just when you think it is safe to come from behinsd yourbunker — err, desk some government economic statistics agency has to go and put out a report dashingg our hopes. Government bureaucrats love todo that. Ever invite one to a party ? Course not. They stand in the corner all night sippingg a Tom Collins and tryinv to interest your guests in chitchat abouty Excel spreadsheets andthe like. I was prett y exited earlier this montn when the stock market had posted quite afew gains. Then a reportt on retail sales in April was worsethan expected. The stockk market fell back again.
Don’t even get me startexd on homesales reports. Another day, another report. On our Web site one day in May, we had two conflictingt headlines about the residential realestate market. They were from two differenrt reports measuring twodifferent things, but theirf discrepancies sure didn’t help me understand the markert any better. Who can keep the the Realtors, the existing-home sales or the new-home sales reportsz straight? The same goes for unemployment. In any given month, we get no fewer than three unemploymenr reports. BLS — that’s the Bureau of Labodr Statistics — issues separate figures for Maryland, Virginiw and D.C.
Then it issuesw yet another figure for the Both figures lag behind thenational number, so most peoples end up comparing apples-to-oranges when they try to talk intelligentl y at networking events. If you need somethingg intelligentto say, just repeat that employment is a laggingy indicator. This recovery, at leastf in the beginning, is likely to be a one. In January 2008, our former editor, Mike used this space to lament the dela in officially declaring the recession that we all knewwas “We want our recession and we want it Mills wrote. But even in the face of mounting evidencre ofa downturn, President Bush refused to recognize how poor the economyy was. Why? Psychology.
Both W and his dad took the same Don’t ask, don’t tell. Like any they knew there would be no escaping a downturj once the leader of the free worldacknowledgex it. W didn’t use the R word untill after the National Bureau ofEconomic Research, a nonprofirt economists group in Cambridge, Mass., said in Decemberr that the recession had actually starte d a year earlier. That was nearly a mont after theNovember election. Then there’s President Barack Obama. Notice how positive his tone has been aboutfthe economy, mere months aftee taking office amid the worst economid crisis since the Great Depression?
News came May 26 that one leadingg indicator, consumer confidence, soared in May to its highest poin since September, and we all know what happenedr in the dark days of If that’s not a psychological I don’t know what is. So how do we keep it going ? We want our recovery and we wantit now. All togethetr now: I think we can. I thino we can. It’s worth giving it a try.