Evidence that a US double dip recession is looking more likely came in four helpings yesterday. Although, in a funny kind of way, it may not be bad news in the long run.

Helping number one came in the shape of the latest figures on US consumer confidence. You may recall, this fell sharply last month. In fact, there are two barometers of US consumer confidence that economists monitor: the University of Michigan measure and the Conference Board measure. Both indices fell in June, but the Michigan University index saw the more dramatic fall, just about cancelling out all the rises seen over the previous 12 months. Yesterday the Conference Board measure for July was out, and it was down again. It has now fallen from a recent peak of 62.7 in May, to 54.3 and now 50.4. Okay, the index is still way up on the depths it sunk to during the recession, at one point falling to just 25.3, but then again, the index was much higher going into the last recession, so the runes are not looking promising.

Helping number two relates to the US housing market. Actually, at face value the latest news was not so bad. According to the S&P Case-Shiller 20-city index, prices were up 1.3 per cent in May, and that on a seasonally adjusted basis. It was the second successive month for price rises, and annually the index is up 4.6 per cent. The big snag is that the recent hikes in the data relate to that period just before the end of the first-time buyer tax credit. What is more worrying is that in the second quarter of this year no less than 18.9 million homes were empty. The quarter also saw the highest number of repossessions in US history, with 269,962 homes taken into possession.

You probably know that one of the big differences between the US and UK property slumps has been repossession numbers. In some ways the attitude of US banks brings back memories of British banks in the early 1990s. Banks’ ruthless attitude to repossessing properties in the UK during the early 1990s made the property crash worse, and in the process may have left banks with more bad debts. This time around banks have a more sympathetic attitude, are more helpful towards lenders who are behind in their payments, and as a result we see fewer forced sales of properties. This is probably the single biggest factor for explaining why the fall in UK house prices has been so modest.

And yet don’t be too quick to slam US banks for their thoughtlessness. The rules in the US are different. In the UK if your property is repossessed, and your bank finally gets less money for it than the mortgage, you are still responsible for paying the difference. In the US, once a property is taken into possession, the mortgage that was taken against the property becomes the bank’s problem. Take that into account and you can see why US banks have a less sympathetic attitude.

But there is a good side to the US way of doing things. At least under the US system the bad news can be got out of the way all the quicker. In Europe, much of policy seems to be designed to simply put problems back. As if the motto is: “Why deal with a problem today when tomorrow things might be easier?” It’s a seductive way of doing things, but then such an approach may make the economic hard times stretch out for longer. In fact, this European way seems to have more in common with Japan’s approach in the early 1990s. So it is possible that the US might see a sharper slowdown, but much quicker recovery.

Helping number three of evidence pointing towards a US double dip comes from Robert Shiller, the very same Shiller who lent his name to the Case-Shiller property index. He was quoted as saying: “For me a double-dip is another recession before we’ve healed from this recession. The probability of that kind of double-dip is more than 50 per cent. I actually expect it.”

So that’s not very encouraging.

And then there was Jim Rogers. Now Mr Rogers is known as a hedge fund guru, and is, by the way, a former partner of George Soros. He told CNBC: “The world is going to be in worse shape because the world has shot all its bullets.” He said that since the beginning of time there has been a recession every four to six years, meaning the US is due a recession in 2012. But he said that because the full arsenal of weaponry was fired at dealing with the last recession, there will be nothing left for the next one.

He also struck a somewhat cynical view on Ben Bernanke’s policy of creating money when he said: “Is Mr. Bernanke going to print more money than he already has? No, the world would run out of trees.”

These comments from Mr Rogers go right to the core of the debate. Is it possible that every time governments try to interfere by softening the effects of a recession, they end up making things worse?

Maybe the economic cycle is good for the economy, with each recession creating an opportunity to purge bad ideas from the system.

There is certainly a case to be made for saying Alan Greenspan’s heroic antics while he was at the Fed, managing to cushion the effect of each crisis, from savings and loans, Argentine default, Asian crisis, Russian crisis, LTCM and dotcom crash, actually shored up an even bigger set of woes to hit us down the line.

And yet for all the bad news, Capital Economics, which by the way was very bearish on the US economy in 2007 whilst others were still dismissing talks of an impending recession, reckons the US growth rate will merely slow next year from 3.5 to 2.5 per cent.