Is the Recession Over?

By Kevin Grewal, editorial director at www.SmartStops.net

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Do the recent optimistic trends signify the worst economic recession seen since the 1930's may be coming to an end?

There are plenty of economic indicators to suggest that is the case. From a macroeconomic perspective, U.S. GDP declined at an annual rate of 1% in the second quarter beating the 1.5% annualized contraction economists had anticipated.

As for the markets, all major U.S. indices have rallied with equities posting their best July performance in the last 70 years, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average north of 9,200, the S&P 500 above 1,000 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq above 2,000.

The second quarter was healthy for corporate America. According to the Wall Street Journal, 74% of publicly traded companies that reported earnings through July 31 beat Wall Street's expectations. Additionally, unemployment numbers are beginning to ease as the Labor Department announced that the national jobless rate declined from 9.5% to 9.4% as companies handed out 247,000 pink slips in July.

There was also a 0.4% increase in consumer spending in June, despite a decline in personal incomes of 1.3% over the same period. Lastly, there was a jump in pending home sales, which extended out a rally of increases to three months in a row for the first time in the past five years.

Those who believe that tough times are still ahead are preaching that corporate America beat Wall Street's expectations through cost-cutting measures and not increases in revenues, same-store sales of big retail chains have been declining, overseas markets, which are a reason for the most recent uptrend, could potentially be in a bubble and unemployment benefits are declining because people are running out of them.