No, this isn't a recession, it's a long, hard, debt-driven 'Great Contraction'

Ezra Klein had a
good summary
of an economist's argument about why the current situation is not a recession,
with a predictable quick recovery pattern, but rather a contraction caused by
excessive debt, with a recovery that takes many years and likely is followed by
slow growth.

Here's the money
quote, as it were:

"Debt de-leveraging takes about seven years. That's the
essence," she says. "And in the decade following severe financial crises, you
tend to grow by 1 to 1.5 percentage points less than in the decade before,
because the decade before was fueled by a boom in private borrowing, and not
all of that growth was real. The unemployment figures in advanced economies
after falls are also very dark. Unemployment remains anchored about five
percentage points above what it was in the decade before."

If you are not
depressed yet, try this
from the Financial Times.