Recession Declared Officially Over, Unemployment Still Rising

"The great recession is over," NABE President-Elect Lynn Reaser said. "The vast majority of business economists believe that the recession has ended, but that the economic recovery is likely to be more moderate than those typically experienced following steep declines."

Those words pretty much sum up the position of the majority of economists when asked about the state of the U.S. economy and its recent recession. The worst of the crisis would seem to be behind us, but how the recovery process will occur is still a mystery to most. Unemployment is likely going to worsen into 2010 and may not start to see significant recovery until 2012.

That projection alone should be both worrisome and encouraging. Economic forecasting is notoriously inaccurate, so 2012 could either be very optimistic or very pessimistic, depending on the other factors you choose to focus on. Many analysts believe that the housing market is nearing its bottom and that prices will eventually stabilize. That would seem to be a very reasonable assumption, but the other side of that is that prices are not likely to climb in the near future.

And they may never climb again at the rates that were seen during the ill-advised housing boom. Without that kind of growth to sustain ill-conceived government spending structures, the U.S. is going to have to continue to slash its spending at both the public and private level.

That fact alone is going to slow recovery, in technical terms, but it may result in a more stable economy, albeit one with limited growth for the foreseeable future.