It's always interesting to try to reconcile press headlines about the economy with what's actually happening around you. Here are some datapoints that have come my way this week, most of which are pointing to a nasty recession already taking place:
- Cabbie with no fares. I get into a cab, terribly late to a lunch across town. The driver, who nearly comes flying into the pavement to pick me up before another cab, tells me I'm his first customer of the day. It's past 2pm. Then he says that business so far in 2008 is the worst he can ever remember, and that it was already starting late in 2007.
- Cafe with no customers. Next day, I go into a cafe with two colleagues to have an end of day meeting. It's already past 7pm. But the place looks about ready to close, so we hesitate when stepping inside. The bartender tells us that since there had been no customers *at all* during the afternoon that she just decided to prepare closing a couple hours early.
- Shops with no tenants. Getting a coffee this morning on my way to work I happened upon a conversation between locals in our neighborhood, gossiping about the massive oversupply in retail space in the area. Lots of shops available to rent, but no tenants in sight. Some of these places have been empty for many months.
- PR firms with bankrupt clients. A friend of mine in the UK is in the process of hiring a PR firm for his company, and was asked abruptly by the firm to prepay all the next three months' retainers because many of their 'thought-to-be solvent customers' were now communicating an inability to pay the firm's invoices.
Oddly, in the US where things are meant to be worse than in Europe, friends and suppliers are reporting excellent business. Only a few people connected to the mortgage industry are having a very tough time.
Just some data points, nothing worth extrapolating from. But it does highten sensitivity to what may be a major turn in economic conditions around the corner.
On a side note, getting an accurate, bigger picture of trends like this is something I've always wanted to do with the massive data that we are generating at
Properazzi. We've started analyzing real estate for sale and for rent on an ad-hoc basis for some professionals asking us for very precise analytic queries, with interesting results. It would be interesting to explore this further...