According to Newsweek
The long-leading index—which goes back to the 1920s and doesn’t include stock prices but does include measures related to credit, housing, productivity, and profits—hits bottom and starts to climb about six months before a recession ends. The weekly leading index calls directional shifts about three to four months in advance. And the short-leading index, which includes stock prices and jobless claims, is typically the last to turn up.
All three are now flashing green. According to Achuthan, the long-leading index growth rate has been recovering since November 2008, the weekly leading index has been recovering since last December, and the short-leading index growth rate bottomed in February 2009. In sequence, each turned up, "and by April the three Ps had all been satisfied." Sure, corporate profits continue to disappoint, and the unemployment rate is climbing. But for ECRI, which navigates by relying exclusively on its instruments, that’s only a part of their picture. They’re the Spocks of the economic forecasting crowd—unemotional, uninvested in anything but the logic of what history and their dashboard tell them. "From our vantage point, every week and every month our call is getting stronger, not weaker, including over the last few weeks," says Achuthan. "The recession is ending somewhere this summer." In fact, it may already be over.
There’s plenty of ground for skepticism, in part because the news flow is still quite negative, especially when it comes to corporate profits. ECRI’s response? "Indicators are typically judged by their freshness, not their prescience. Since most market-moving numbers are coincident to short leaning, while corporate guidance is often lagging, it is no surprise that analysts do not discern any convincing evidence of an economic upturn."
So the recession was caused a drastic rise in the price of oil and when the recession hit, the demand of oil dropped, the price went down and that in turn helps with the economic turn around. This of course causes an increase in demand for oil which will drive up the price of oil again. That’s great if you are a Saudi oil prince or are Ed Stemach but not so great for the rest of us who have to pay for it. My question is that are we heading into a cycle where we escape a recession only to head right back into one because of high oil prices… that is until we change our economy away from carbon based fuels. The Wall Street Journal talked about the phenomenon and the possibility of W or a double dip recession.
Double-dip recessions are rare, and not well defined. It is common for a period of shrinking GDP to be punctuated by at least one positive quarter, as occurred in 2001, but the imprecision of GDP and frequent revisions means that at the time, it didn’t feel like much of a rebound occurred. An exception is 1980-1982 which the official score keeper, the National Bureau of Economic Research, considers two recessions but some say should be considered one, punctuated by a year of growth.
During the 1990s, Japan also experienced several periods of expansion often driven by aggressive public works spending that fizzled as asset prices fell further, eroding the banking system’s capital and suffocating the supply of credit. It’s too soon to forecast the same for the U.S. whose underlying growth is higher thanks to a growing population, and whose financial system is (on the surface at least) better capitalized. Nonetheless, widespread declines in real estate collateral values may make this cycle be different from most post-war recessions.
Even if this is over, it doesn’t look like we are in the free and clear yet.
I think not look @ unemployment, If it is over i would be working
i am hoping that the global economy would recover from this economic recession. life has been very hard with these massive job cuts.