Today's news brings us word that the OECD's leading indicator suggests that Canada has already hit the trough of this recession:
I'm seeing lots of graphs that look like this; they're below the fold.
We'll start with housing starts, because the May numbers were also released today. The month-to-month numbers are pretty noisy, so the 9% increase that's making the headlines should be put in perspective – especially since it's a 9% increase off a low base. This graph plots the three-month moving average.
Here's the employment graph I posted a few days ago:
Update: Hours worked also shows a rebound in May:
The most recent GDP release only goes up to March, but has similar features:
The free fall in GDP ended in February, and given what we know about April and May, it's hard to see why GDP would have continued to plummet in the past two months.
None of these pictures are of a recovery, and each of them are drawn from noisy monthly series that may be subject to revision. But if you put them all together, it starts to look like where a recovery would start.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Plus the big signs of recovery in financial markets (stock prices up, interest rate spreads narrowed). The level of fear seems so much less than in the Fall.
I’m tempted too to say it’s the beginning of recovery. But scared of jinxing it. If it does turn out to be the beginnings of a recovery, I would say we are either very lucky, or policy was very successful. It could have turned out a lot worse.
The funny thing is, if it is a matter of successful policy, many will ask whether the policy was necessary.
Uh oh, I’ve seen this type of behaviour before. It was halfway through the Nasdaq crash of 00/01. People began calling bottom every time the Naz had an up day. Eventually they were right; broke, but right.
Similar post, but for the US (nowhere near as optimistic):
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2009/06/do_you_see_what.html