Has the U.S. Recession Bottomed Out? By Jason P. Jones At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

The US housing crisis which has been pinpointed by most as the root cause of the current economic recession is finally showing some signs of recovery. Confidence in the current economy may have been bolstered by the approval of the Obama administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus package which was past in the first two months of President Obama taking office.

$75 billion has been allocated for the Homeowner Stability Initiative which was designed to bail out home owners threatened by foreclosures. These measures may have restored the buyer’s confidence in the housing and stock market as seen by the improvements in the number of house sales and the sudden jump in the stock market.

In the housing scene, house sales are once again on the rise. In Fairfield, California, housing agents are seeing an increase in house inquiries and sales. The resurgence in interest and demands has been spurred by the rock bottom prices. The mortgage problem had driven house prices to historic lows, with some mind you, going down to as low as $1. House prices are now just 10% of its former value. In Detroit, the average sales prices of went down to $8,692 last year from $46,702 in 2003 and in the first month of 2009, average sales were just a paltry $6,035. With house value this low, cash endowed citizens are snapping houses by large numbers.

According to First American CoreLogic, in "Fairfield sales jumped 226% in the fourth quarter of last year compared to the same quarter in 2007 and home prices during that period fell 19% to $179,500". Target for buying are houses that are well maintained and up scale but very cheap. These types of houses are bought by the dozen not just by local buyers but foreign buyers from as far as UK and Australia. This increase in housing sales is not just localized in fact in Cape Coral, Florida house sales has also gone up by 103%.

The good news doesn’t end there; the US stock market is also up beat surging several points to 6,926. The catalyst is the report from Citigroup of a net profit for the first 2 months of 2009. The last time the company posted profit was in summer of 2007. Citigroup's gross revenue was reported at $19 billion with net earnings of $10.9 billion. This positive news alone pushed the Dow Jones industrial average to rise up by 379 points. Citigroup shares had risen 38 percent and also affected other stocks to increase.

This in turn tipped other bourses especially in the Asia to go up. The positive news prompted Japan's Nikkei to increase by 4.4 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng went up by 2.9 percent. Others like South Korea rise up by 3 percent while Australia's went up by 2 percent.

Though some experts consider this as a bear market rally, which means it’s not sustainable and the short term, it my also end up as the turn around everyone is waiting. Whether all this gains is sustainable or not remains to be seen and will provide the answer to the question “has the recession has really bottomed out”?

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