Is It A “U” or “V” Shaped Housing Recovery? Or, Is It Some Other Letter?

This is the sort of crap (sorry, I meant to say something far more tame, but the only word that came to mind was crap! Will gladly take submissions for other words, though) that makes people get really upset (I had thought of a different word for “upset” but, in this case, was able to come up with the tamer word “upset” rather than pissed….ooops, sorry, didn’t mean to say that! Upset, is what I mean to say!) when they listen or read so-called experts riff on the economy.

In a Reuters story called “U.S. housing starts keep recovery hopes alive,” (which doesn’t really say anything, but makes a nifty headline to make fun of) one of these experts, a dude named Kurt Kari, is quoted as saying, “The economy is recovering, this is the turning of the corner. We will have positive growth this quarter, but not a lot of strength. It very much looks like a U-shaped recovery rather than V-shaped.”

What the hell does that mean? A U-shaped recovery rather than V-shaped? Why not a W-shaped recovery, which would combine the best of U and V?

In any event, he was referring to news that ground breaking for new single family homes has risen now for five months in a row…even though, at the same time, there was a 13.3 percent drop in new multifamily projects, says the Reuters story.

And, that has been the problem pretty much with all the data of late–tends to be contradictory…

One set of numbers says one thing, another set of numbers says something else. (Sounds like some folks in Washington, doesn’t it?)

For sure, there are signs the economy may be healing. Japan, Germany and France doing better for one thing (or three things).

But there is also enough data out there to support the notion we may simply be in the eye of the storm poised to smack right into the next wall of low pressure. More foreclosures on the way; more unemployment likely; the possible failure of most of the Obama health care reform package which could lead to even higher medical costs down the road.

Since real estate (and a bunch of crooks at the banks and on Wall Street ) got us into this economic cesspool, everyone is keeping an eye on real estate to point the way out.

Because of that, there is a lot of wishful thinking going around and a lot of jumping to all sorts of conclusions not borne out by the actual data.

When you hear an expert refer to a Y or U or Z or T or Z shaped recovery, mark my words, the real letter that should be used is B and I don’t think I have to tell you what that stands for in this case?

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Article Author: Charles Feldman

Charles has written 179 articles for us.
Visit Charles's Website: http://www.thefeldmanblog.com

Charles is currently reporting for KNX Radio in Los Angeles, is the co-author of the book No Time To Think, and can be found commenting about the news on his blog, The Feldman Blog, as well as on The Huffington Post.