Optimistic Sign #6: Housing Starts Bottoming?
Today's big economic news was that February's housing starts--the number of new homes which began construction during the month--jumped in a big way from January. One month does not make a trend, but a lot of people smarter than I think that housing starts are a leading indicator for when we enter or exit a recession.
The pessimistic counter-argument would be that housing starts have fallen almost 80% from the peak, and since they can't go negative there has to be a bottom somewhere.
Which would also be my point: there has to be a bottom somewhere. We may be at that bottom right now, though we won't know for sure for several months to come.