We are in the middle of the second ‘Great Depression’.

The world is collapsing as we know it.

Capitalism is dead!

I think we have seen an interesting change of sentiment over the last six weeks or so.  It seems that the United States as a whole is sick and tired, of being sick and tired.  The economic quagmire we are currently in is going on its 18th month.  In our fast paced society, that is an extremely long time.  Since March 6, the Dow has been up over 20%, and is currently in the middle of a six week up streak.  Is everything great?  Of course not, but we are seeing plenty of signs that things are beginning to level off. Not to mention, I was extremely excited to find a picture of what appears to be a happy stock broker.  It sure beats the pictures in this FaceBook Group.

Of course you could look at standard economic measures, such as mortgage applications coming back to life, the banks are actually showing profits, we had the first successful IPO in over a year last week, and there have been ten M&A deals in the last two weeks alone.

You could also look at it from more of a high level perspective.  I spent all of last week in Florida, at our home on Anna Maria Island.  I have been visiting there for six years now, and I have NEVER seen it as crowded as it was last week.  I spoke to people at restaurants and they indicated that it was the busiest they have been in five years.  I saw a line of 30 people waiting outside of an ice cream shop just to get in.  I guess you could be cynical and say that many of these people were driving to Florida for Spring Break in lieu of a more extravagant trip, or “going to visit the grandparents”, but in the end, people were out vacationing and spending money.  The government has infused hundreds of billions of dollars into the banks, and companies like AIG, but there is no question that consumer spending, which accounts for two thirds of our overall economy, is what is going to get our economy back going in the right direction.

Yes, millions of people have lost their jobs in this downturn , and millions more will in the remainder of this year, but signs of recovery are beginning to pop up in many places.  We as Americans are quite resilient and it will be exciting to watch us crawl out of this and get people working again.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.