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http://www.census.gov/briefrm/esbr/www/esbr020.html

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/S3yB5DAAEcI/AAAAAAAAMzY/vvQOtV4OCII/s1600-h/fredgraph.png

A partial recovery, after a severe downturn, is not a V-shaped recovery. The data in the chart reflect more of an L-shaped than V-shaped recovery so far.

The long-term trend line (10-year moving average) of potential and actual output reflects the L-shaped recovery (which can be found in Monetary Trends by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis). It's even worse when import destruction is included.

U.S. auto sales averaged 16 million units over a five year period in the 2000s, fell below 10 million units, and are expected to recover to about 12 million units in 2010.

March 2009

"US auto sales, which are already at a 34-year low, will likely drop another 30-40 percent and may never recover to previous levels, finds a new report from CIBC World Markets. The report projects that American consumers will only buy about 8-9 million vehicles a year over the next five years, roughly half of what we've seen in the last half-decade. "Detroit's biggest problem isn't that it's producing the wrong type of vehicles but rather, that it's producing too many vehicles-far too many," says Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets. "Just as two million housing starts proved to be a bubble, so was the average 16 million unit auto sales of the last five years."

Also, housing starts are way below the 2 million per year level, while capacity utilization is low:

U.S. housing starts hit 6-month high, output rises
Feb 17, 2010

WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (Reuters) - U.S. housing starts rose to a six-month high in January and industrial output increased solidly, pointing to an economic recovery that was taking a firm hold and respectable first-quarter growth.

Groundbreaking activity for new homes increased 2.8 percent to an annual rate of 591,000 units, reversing the prior month's weather-induced drop, a report from the Commerce Department showed on Wednesday. That was above market expectations for a 580,000-unit pace.

The housing starts report, however, hinted at fundamental improvement. Over the past 12 months, housing starts have surged 21.1 percent, the largest increase since April 2004.

Capacity utilization, a measure of slack in the economy, rose to 72.6 percent from 71.9 percent a month earlier, but was still 8 percentage points below the average from 1972 to 2009, suggesting little inflationary pressure.

Housing starts peaked at a 2.273 million unit annual pace in January 2006 and bottomed at 479,000 units last April. They have been bouncing around between 500,000 and 600,000 units.

Permits for new building projects fell 4.9 percent to 621,000 units last month after rising to a 14-month high of 653,000 in December, the Commerce Department said.