Recession: One Year And Counting

It's official -- we've been in recession since last December. Though most of the attention to the subject has come since Wall Street collapsed in September, the National Bureau of Economic Research today said the U.S. economy had been contracting since its peak in December of 2007.

It's worth noting that there have not been two consecutive quarters of economic contraction since last year, which the NBER says has never been a criteria for declaring a recession. It also notes that it defines 'diminishing' economic activity as a sign of contraction, not 'diminished.' As for whether the economy is still diminishing, the NBER said only that it "does not forecast."

Michael Fitzgerald

Michael Fitzgerald writes about innovation and other big ideas in business for publications like the New York Times, The Economist, Fast Company, Inc. and CIO. He’s worked as a writer or editor at Red Herring, ZDNet, TechTV and Computerworld, and has received numerous awards as a writer and editor. Most recently, his piece on the hacker collective the l0pht won the 2008 award for best trade piece from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. He was also a 2007 Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow in Science and Religion.

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