While it’s great that it has finally been acknowledged, the National Bureau of Economic Research’s announcement on Monday that the U.S. is officially in a recession is old news — even by the bureau’s own estimation.

Update: President Bush says he’s sorry about the state of America’s economy.

AP via Yahoo News:

The U.S. economy has been in a recession since December 2007, the National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday.

The NBER — a private, nonprofit research organization — said its group of academic economists who determine business cycles met and decided that the U.S. recession began last December.

By one benchmark, a recession occurs whenever the gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services, declines for two consecutive quarters. The GDP turned negative in the July-September quarter of this year, and many economists believe it is falling in the current quarter at an even sharper rate.

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#bailout#ben bernanke#economy#george w bush#henry paulson#market#mortgage#president#recession