It can't be sustained". The fact that the nation's gross domestic product, the broadest gauge of its output of goods and services, has continued on a path of meager growth delays, for the time being, any official declaration of recession.
The declaration of the recession's end confirms what many suspected: The 2007-9 recession was not only the longest post-World War II recession, but also the deepest, in terms of both job losses and at least one measure of output declines.
The official declaration on a recession could add urgency to Washington's debate over a stimulus package for the economy, analysts said.
Such a system would satisfy the need for a prompt and authoritative declaration that a recession (as defined by economists) had ended, and it would also leave the committee with all the time it needed to discuss finer points, such as the exact month in which things turned up.
A sharp dissenter from Mr. Summers's declaration that the recession is over was Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, who said that, given a 10percentt national unemployment rate and 11percentt in Kentucky, "I don't think it's over".
A day after the official declaration of a national recession, visitors journeyed to the New York Public Library from Atlanta, Palm Beach, Fla., White Plains and Queens to see a $126,000 coffee-table book that is actually the size of a coffee table.
This group has not yet met to declare whether the recession is over, but I think when they do meet, and if they do declare that I mean, when they do meet, the only declaration that would be surprising is that they didn't declare the recession over.
The country's labor force has edged back towards full employment for the first time since the Great Recession, but for some groups of workers that declaration of victory continues to have deeply limited meaning.
Most of us are going to need something more convincing than economists' declarations to persuade us that the recession has ended in the face of all the bleak news about jobs, income and debt.
