Over five years ago, we suffered the worst recession since the Great Depression almost 100 years ago. Since then, our economic recovery has been the weakest of all recoveries in history. There are many reasons for the weak recoveries. The fact that our real estate market was devastated and needed years to recover was certainly a main factor. But there were other reasons for the stops and starts which were external. We had domestic and worldwide natural disasters from hurricanes and super storms, to tsunamis. We will not get into a debate as to whether global warming is causing these extreme weather events, but we will acknowledge that they were very, very extreme and caused major damage to populations and property.
There were events that were not weather-related, of course. There was the fiscal crisis in Europe and political crises at home. We had wars being fought and terrorist events. Many of these events prolonged the recovery and made us wonder whether we would suffer a double dip recession, which never came. The year 2014 has certainly not been smooth sailing with our famously cold winter and the crisis in the Ukraine. However, we believe our economy has recovered to the point that we no longer talk about slipping back in recession. The drop in the economic growth in the first quarter is a testament to that confidence. Economists shrugged off the down quarter almost universally. So what comes next?
The sun is shining and there is no more cold winter. We are running out of excuses for the economy being so lackluster during a recovery period. The May employment report released on June 6 showed continued progress in that regard. The last two months has seen a significant pickup in hiring but the employment report also shows how far we need to go. We have recovered all the jobs lost during the recession, but accounting for population growth during the past six years, we have seven million jobs to go. Economists surveyed by CNN/Money indicate that it would take two years or more at this pace for the unemployment rate to reach 5.5 percent and wage growth is still anemic. The good news? A slow recovery continues to support low interest rates and hopefully the Federal Reserve Board agrees with that assessment when they meet as this edition is published.
There is little hope that the Fed will slow down their tapering of stimulus but recently the hawks are making more noise about raising rates. The Beige Book released by the Fed in early June also showed the recovery continuing. But there was enough concern about the housing sector in the report that the Fed should be hesitant to take a stronger stance on rates.
Dave Hershman is a top author in the mortgage industry with seven books published. He is also the founder of the OriginationPro Marketing System, and currently the director of branch support for McLean Mortgage. He may be reached by e-mail at
[email protected] or visit www.originationpro.com.
