What we have been told is a “recovery” has a way of throwing off false trails. We were told to expect a robust performance, this year, from the housing sector yet, yesterday, for example, we learn that home-builder confidence has not merely fallen, but cratered. As Reuters reports:
The weather, of course, is the standby explanation for any, and all, bad economic news.
Moving to a more hopeful development, Americans are not letting the weather keep them from getting divorced and that, according to Mark Zandi, is good news for the economy. As Steve Mathews of Bloomberg writes:
And as Zandi explains:
Mr. Zandi makes Émile Coué look like Joe Bfstplk.
An alternative explanation might be that people have concluded that the economy is permanently in the ditch and there is no sense, any longer, in waiting for things to get better before acting. In any event, it is going to be tough on all those people getting a divorce when they move out and find that nobody has been building houses for them to live in.
