Still, recession is increasingly on people's minds.
Will consumer demand remain robust as the human toll of recession becomes increasingly apparent?
Now, however, as government lifelines fade and a second recession seems increasingly possible, banks are finding growth constrained.
With a relatively long recession looking increasingly likely, many American families may be planning to tighten their belts.
Real estate, which has traditionally brought the economy out of recession, seems increasingly likely this time to hold it back.
The government, reporting on the year's first quarter, said the economy took off full speed, making last year's brief, shallow recession an increasingly dim memory.
A superannuated government; a derided prime minister; a plausible, but not quite loved, leader of the opposition; a recession; an increasingly grim war: each of these conditions has obtained before, but not in quite the same way or combination.
Pushed by the economic recession and increasingly stringent greenhouse gas emissions regulations, membership in car-sharing programs rose 117 percent in North America between 2007 and 2009, according to a report by the market research company Frost and Sullivan, published in January this year.
That a work of fiction has now assumed the form of an auction catalog could be seen as a sign of the times — deeply materialistic and, with a big recession on, increasingly for sale.
Piling on the pressure the Greek government is also demanding that the country's fiscal and structural reform programme be extended by two years through to 2016 in what is now seen as the only way of ameliorating the impact of the measures on a society mired in a fifth year of recession and increasingly pushed to the brink.
