How about a little sunshine for a change. Keep in mind that this is opinion and flies in the face of a lot ofcurrent data but Arnold Kling is a pretty level-headed economist.

Writing in The Atlantic he makes the following observations:

Sudeep Reddy takes note of an important fact about the current recession:

1.  Cutbacks in employment (and, I would add, hours worked) are sharp relative to the cutbacks in output.

In addition, I would point out that:

2.  The stock of automobiles is aging, because hardly any new cars have been bought for the past year.

3.  Household formation is falling, because people cannot afford to form new households.

4.  The rate of homebuilding is way below the long-term trend.

All of these factors will turn around once economic growth picks up.  Firms will find themselves needing to add workers in order to meet demand.  People will have pent-up demand to form households and get new cars.  Homebuilding will actually start to contribute positively to growth.