What’s Real in the Recession? : Experts say that it ended nearly two years ago--in case you hadn’t noticed

It’s official: The nation’s ninth postwar recession ended in March, 1991. Say what? The panel of academic economists who oversee such matters has formally declared the recession is over. But then again these are the same people who did not even acknowledge that the recession was in force until April, 1991--one month after the recession presumably ended and well after the economic slump began in July, 1990.

No wonder consumers feel insecure and unsure about the economy, a factor that hurt President Bush’s reelection bid and worked to Gov. Bill Clinton’s ultimate advantage. News of the recession’s “end” clashes with reality, particularly here in California where depressed real estate, the downsizing of the defense industry and continuing state budget problems create an uncertain economic outlook for the state.

The marking of the recession’s end by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private research group, has little practical use except to historians and chart makers. That bureau’s Business Cycle Dating Committee declared the recession ended after it studied the Commerce Department’s latest revision of total output of goods and services in the United States in the third quarter.

The gross domestic product, one of the many measures the committee uses in making its assessment about business cycles, was revised downward to a seasonally adjusted 3.4% rate of growth from July to September, but that’s still the best showing in four years.

The climb out of the recession has been unusually sluggish and mixed even though the actual contraction of the economy has not been as bad as in past recessions. Yet the quirky, mixed economic signals have defied normal patterns of recovery. A clear turning point has been frustratingly elusive.

The government traditionally accepts the committee’s assessments for business cycles. This time appears no different. Yet when news of the recession’s end comes a dismal 21 months after the so-called fact--and with the nation’s biggest state still mired in trouble--you can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a better, faster and more accurate way to get a fix on the nation’s economic pulse.