Surprise! In case you gave up on keeping up with the economic news last winter, spring may have sprung for the stock market. The S&P 500 Index has risen 25 percent since early March.

"Rational inattention," the technical phrase for turning away from an information deluge, may have been an appropriate reaction to the tidal wave of bad economic news. There's only so much dismal economics one can take.

That may be why movies are earning 10 percent to 15 percent more in revenue this year than last. Going to the movies is one of the things people do during a recession. The financial news hasn't exactly been mood-enhancing.

So, it may come as a pleasant surprise to find that stock prices steadily have been rising for more than a few weeks. There actually may be a bottom approaching in this downturn.

What do economic data suggest?

Before taking stock (no pun intended), remember that there are few precedents for how quickly and deeply things fell off a cliff after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. At that moment, to inversely paraphrase Warren Buffett, "fear overcame greed."

Some fears faded: $150-a-barrel oil became $50-a-barrel oil. But other fears undid the financial system. Leverage, opaqueness, contagion —popular financial market terms of late — amplified the downdraft.

For many investors and consumers the only individually rational, precautionary response available, as credit evaporated, was hoarding. How? By selling assets or by cutting back on spending ... or both. Unfortunately, when everyone hoards at the same time, it chokes the economy. Economic activity shrinks, outright.

Dramatic monetary and fiscal policy responses by central banks and central governments worldwide stemmed the financial unraveling. Signs of policy coherence and even coordination — such as tentatively emerged from the recent G-20 meetings — are starting to appear. But recovery will take heavy lifting by everybody. Consumer and investor confidence will have to revive for lasting recovery.

Where to now? What do Hawai'i data now say about our current economic state?

It's not as bad as you might think.

Serious mortgage delinquency rates highlight centers of toxicity across the country: Dade County, Fla. (12.3 percent), Merced County, Calif. (10.6 percent), and Clark County, Nev. (8.2 percent). Compare those proportions to: Maui County (3.2 percent), Hawai'i County (3.1 percent), and O'ahu (1.6 percent). Hawai'i home-borrowers are in way better shape than on the Mainland.

The oft-cited S&P Case-Shiller index of 20 Mainland cities' home prices declined about 28 percent between first quarter 2006 and first quarter 2009. In the same time frame, Maui median home prices declined 24 percent and O'ahu prices declined 9 percent. (It's not apples and oranges to compare Case-Shiller to median sales prices, more like Galas and Fujis.) Even if Neighbor Island housing markets are more "Mainland-like," housing is more resilient in the Islands than across the country.

Some people are still waiting for "lagged effects." This is not your parents' recession: No one is waiting for the Lurline to ship it over. This is a globally synchronized recession; it's happening in Hawai'i "in real time." The resilience of O'ahu home prices tells you, "Hawai'i mo' bettah."

Tourism gets its share of bad headlines; officials officially embrace the pain. If the published data were seasonally adjusted, here's what the news would be: domestic visitor counts were rising from September 2008 through February 2009 — from July, if you discount September — and international counts began to rebound in October 2008.

Seasonally adjusted, domestic and international visitor counts have risen 6 percent since the September/October lows, and February 2009 domestic visitor arrivals were 3 percent higher than in July 2008.

No doubt, tourism volumes are lower than one year ago (about 13 percent). Still, by definition, six months of seasonally adjusted increases means that tourism recovery is already under way, however slowly. At worst, travel volumes are no longer declining.

The decline in monthly U.S. real personal consumption expenditure last June signaled the start of an intense deepening of the recession. Since October, however, consumption has been bouncing along the bottom of its trajectory rather than declining. Consumers are starting to come out of their cave, and investors are out hunting and gathering. Spring is in the air.

Reach Paul Brewbaker at (Unknown address).

Paul Brewbaker is the principal for TZ Economics. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.