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- Market perspective: 100 hands are better than two (Russell.com)
As a starting point, we already know that we've been in an official recession that began in December 2007. The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is the official arbiter that determines the beginning and end of recessions. This committee historically has identified these points in time between eight and 12 months after the fact (we were informed of the December 2007 beginning of the recession in December 2008). This means that even if the recession was ending today, we probably wouldn't know that for sure until sometime in early 2010. I expect — with serious possibilities of forecast error — that it will end sometime in the fall of 2009. If I'm right, the recession will have lasted between 20 and 22 months, making this the longest recession since the 43-month Great Depression of the 1930s. Since then, the U.S. has suffered 12 recessions. The longest of these were the 16-month recessions of 1973-75 and 1981-82.