Too much of everything

The guys at Zero Hedge have put together a report on the state of the economy and why we’re not going to go back to the good old days next month or next year: “The End of the End of the Recession”. Daily Kos has a useful summary. You can download the whole 75 page slide presentation here. (Don’t let the page count put you off. It’s very skimmable and quite a bit of it is charts.)

One theme you’ll see here is one I’ve seen in many places. The past decades of excess have left us with too much of everything. Too many malls, too much office space, too many hotel rooms. Too many houses – many of them too big for the new frugality. Too many cars – many of them too big when fuel prices spike.

It will take years to run through the current real estate glut. We could quit building now and not need to build another house, condo, strip mall, office building, restaurant, bank branch, vacation home, hotel, or car dealership for years, possibly even a decade