Yep, U.S. is officially in a recession

No real surprise

[jimbeetle]

The National Bureau of Economic Research has made it official [wwwdev.nber.org]:

The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met by conference call on Friday, November 28. The committee maintains a chronology of the beginning and ending dates (months and quarters) of U.S. recessions. The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months.

[Rugles]

Its no real surprise however what is surprising is that it started 1 year ago.

[phranque]

that surprises me as well - i think it started more than a year ago and we've been burning furniture to keep the house warm.

[woop01]

What makes that private organization's declaration more official than the generally accepted definition of two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP?

They basically just write that definition off as "yeah, we know but we do it differently". I like their definition better but calling it "official" is a stretch.

[weeks]

It started a year ago? Oh. Hmmm. And "people" expect the recession to last, what?, 18 months? 24 months? Or, recessions typically last about...OK, you can see where I'm going with this... Maybe this will be a "short" recession since it's an earlier recession than we thought.

If you're not laughing at this, then you're not getting it.

[jimbeetle]

He, he, yeah, I'm laughing ;-). That's happened a few times in the past, by the time they identified a recession we were already on the way out of it. Doesn't sound like we're going to be that lucky this time around.