Keeping perspective.

HIGHLIGHTING HOPE THAT WORST IS BEHIND US."
Bend Bulletin, 3/21/10.

So do we celebrate now? Do we sigh a big sigh of relief?

Way back in late August, 2009, I said this:

"Anyway, I believe the national economy isn't going to get much better very fast, (but) that it will APPEAR as though things are improving. As I've pointed out several times lately, we're about to double up on the extreme drop of last September. (Remember? Lehman Brother, Merrill Lynch, AIG and John McCain flying to Washington to save us?)"

I'd go even farther today. I'd say that in September 2008, the financial markets had a heart attack, and it was on life support, and the doctors had opened up its chest and was massaging its greedy little heart and giving it transfusion after transfusion of cash.

So, yeah. We're going to look better than that.

Yet another real estate agent saying, "....I don't think prices will go any lower than they have..." and eventually one of these guys is bound to be right.

As I mentioned yesterday, when your housing starts are close to zero, it doesn't take much of an uptick to see dramatic increases in percentages. Sure enough, Bend saw over a 100% improvement -- a grand total of 37 permits. However, to put that in perspective, Bend had 364 permits issued in one month in 2006.

So, yeah, we've probably hit bottom. My sales are up every month since last September, but I'm careful to put that in perspective, and to realize that the rate of growth is slow enough that it will takes a very long time to get back to previous levels.

One interesting thing about the graphs the Bulletin posts are the 'tourist' oriented numbers. The plane boardings and room taxes -- those haven't dropped anywhere near what the construction numbers did. Proving, I think, that the real core business of Bend is tourism and since the rest of the world didn't get hit as hard as we did, we're almost bound to have better numbers brought in from the outside.

Which is great for me, and for businesses that depend on tourism to get us over the hump.

But tourism and retirement create minimum wage jobs -- so we are going to have to get used to that for the foreseeable future.

To be fair, the Bulletin and Tim Duy both point out that much of the improvement is due to federal tax credits, and that we are likely the "bump along the bottom". I doubt we'll pump along the bottom for a full decade, like we did in the '80's, but a few years seems likely to me.