How long is the piece of string

The New York Times ran a co-opted piece yesterday asking a number of commentators on their thoughts as to when the recession would come to an end.

There were some rather diverse views.

Hope sustains life, but misplaced hope prolongs recessions. At the root of this paradox is the notion that booms don’t just precede booms, they cause them

says James Grant

A warning from Stephen Roache

any such whiffs of growth are likely to herald a false dawn, because the consumer remains in terrible shape.

If governments are quick and clear in their intentions and intervene in a coordinated way in both the real economy and the financial sector, we will probably have an unusually long and deep global recession through 2010. If they don’t, it is likely to be worse than that.

says Michael Spence

And another warning from Carmen Reinhart who says

Counting the months of decline, however, is a narrow gauge of distress. A better metric is the length of time it takes the economy to recover to the level of per capita income at its prior peak.

before reminding us that the period was 10 years in the 1930's