Free-falling economies may have found bottoms

JUST two months ago, there were some prophets of doom in our midst telling us that a “Great Recession” was imminent, as major economic indicators in almost every country were still showing signs of drastic and unprecedented declines.

But ever since the emergence of some encouraging economic data that we saw last month, prophets of hope seemed to have taken over the stage and have been enlightening us with comforting words that the worst is over and most economies will soon turn the corner. Although some of those forward-looking economic data are not necessarily pointing to an expansion of the economy, they are indicating that the rate of decline has started to moderate since March. As a matter of fact, some of those data are still in the red. Their performances have merely improved from previous months. And in gloom times such as these, any data that is less negative than before will definitely be taken in as positive indications.