Tuesday, June 9, 2009

That Jet Lag Thingy

My last time to China I recovered rather quickly from the flight. This time I did well on the way over but coming back the recovery has been very slow. I have been back six days and still woke up at 4:30 and am now feeling the best I have all day - just as I need to think about going to bed. Still, with my day-long zombie haze lifting, I thought I would sneak in a short post.

Yves at Naked Capitalism, likely in the interest of a balanced approach, today presented some competing posts; one that sees a recovery in place and one that questions the green shoots we are seeing. I link them both here:

http://pensionpulse.blogspot.com/2009/06/full-steam-ahead.html

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/06/more-data-casting-doubts-on-green.html

Both are well written and worth the read. What strikes me is the divergence in focus, which I am noticing a lot these days. Those seeing the recovery in place and the worst behind us tend to look at "indicators." They see the market up as a good sign, commodities rebounding as a good sign, Paul Krugman more upbeat as a good sign and so forth and so on. What many of these articles and posts lack are analysis of data - the fundamentals. The anecdotal "indicators" can be manipulated and misread. Moreover, they might just tell you what people want to hear versus reality. If you look at the less optimistic piece posted above, it focuses on data; data on unemployment, commodities and the like. It looks at why the indicators are misleading. To me, it focuses on reality. I could be all wrong (it won't be the first time) but I prefer the data focus. In the long run, data should win.

So here is more data:

Disclosures: None.

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