Last recession (a very mild one) was not made official until 2 years later. Here's the actual report from July 17th 2003 CAMBRIDGE July 17 -- "The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met yesterday. At its meeting, the committee determined that a trough in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in November 2001. The trough marks the end of the recession that began in March 2001 and the beginning of an expansion. The recession lasted 8 months, which is slightly less than average for recessions since World War II."
The problem now is first, the massive easy money spigot turned on by the Fed because of 911 events - cannot be utilized in part due to a huge run on the dollar over the past year or so. Second, the unprecendented massive credit bubble of the last 6 years is now starting to unwind. Given the amount of debt being carried by the average consumer, even a mild recession would have catastrophic effects on the economy, so dancers probably haven't seen anything yet. They need at minimum to cut down buying X box games for their layabout unemployed/disemployed boyfriends
Greenspan was not perfect but this new Fed Chairman Bernake is certainly not helping things. Now we see this morning a massive 3/4 of a percens drop in interest rates - basically a signal to the rest of the world the Fed is in panic mode. Easy money will hot fix the basic economic problem in america: too much debt held by the average consumer. The average american has grown lazy and sloppy expecting foreign savers to finance our consumption - or worse not even realizing this was occuring