It’s a shame that sarcasm is so difficult to convey over the web.

Most of you have likely heard by now that it’s official: the U.S. has been in a recession since last December. My question now is, does this surprise anyone out there? I’ll admit that I’m actually a little surprised it’s already been a year. It does make sense though, especially when looking at consumer spending last Holiday season. It didn’t increase by much.

Looking at a history of past recessions (since WW2) it’s interesting to note that the majority of them lasted no longer than a year. It’d be nieve of me to believe that because they didn’t often last longer than a year in the past that this one is just about over now, but it is an interesting statistic nonetheless.

Many economists believe that this recession could end sometime in the second quarter of 2009, which could potentially make it the longest economic downturn since the Great Depression. What’s interesting about that is this would make some of the doomsday-callers partially correct in their prediction that this would lead to another Great Depression. Obviously it hasn’t turned into that at this point, and hopefully it won’t, but they would be right at the very least in the length of time of this downturn.

Just some interesting information. Any thoughts?