recessions

The National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER, is a government body whose sole function is to keep track of the country's economic expansions and contractions and determine which month was the peak of an expansion and which month was the bottom of a contraction. For instance, they have announced that December of 2007, was the peak of the last expansion. If you look at the general pattern of expansions and contractions on their website, you will notice that expansions generally last from 3-5 years while contractions generally last about 1-1.5 years. So, about 3 times as much expansion as contraction. What's interesting is the period from 1982 until now. In those 27 years, we have had 24 years of expansion and 3 years of contraction. That's 8 times as much expansion as contraction. There is a price to be paid for that and we are paying it now.