The Economist provides this thought provoking article titled "The Unfinished Recession":

...most economists are still predicting robust economic growth of 3-3.5% over the next 12 months. Many of these are the same economists who in the late 1990s dismissed the idea that America was experiencing a bubble, and who insisted only last year that the economy was not heading for a recession. They were wrong then and are likely to be wrong again. America's economic downturn is not yet over. A protracted period of slow growth—perhaps even a further slump in output—is likely to expose more financial embarrassment of the Enron and WorldCom sort.

The remainder of the article describes some of the author's impetus for a double/triple dip recession in the US.    Of course, a "recession" these days ain't quite the same as it used to be (link to an earlier post I made on this subject):

...The business cycle is not dead, but it does appear to have become more subdued. During the past 20 years, the American economy has been in recession less than 10% of the time. In the 90 years before the second world war, it was in recession 40% of the time. In most other economies, too, expansions have got longer and recessions shorter and shallower. The exception is Japan, which in the past decade has suffered the deepest slump in any rich economy since the 1930s.

An odd jab that appears in the article is directed towards anti-Keynesian's:

...The revolt against Keynesian policies since the 1970s was based on the belief that government intervention destabilises the economy. However, America's recent experience shows that the private sector is quite capable of destabilising things without government help.

Unfortunately, the author engages in EXTREMELY bad logic here.    The "Keynesian revolt" was that government policies exacerbate cycles (due to problems like legislative delays in implementing programs;  bad spending choices, etc.).    The revolt did not, for the most part, argue that govt spending caused cycles in the first place.

Corporate profits are one of the leading indicators she (and many others) cite to illustrate the weakness of the recovery:

...For corporate America, the recession has been far from mild: profits and business investment have suffered their steepest decline since the 1930s. But despite the collapse in share prices, the economy as a whole has so far held up much better than expected.

Very good point, for the short term, we can model that there are actually 2 economies here -- the consumer one and the business one.   The business economy sucks, although consumer economy generally seems to be healthy... for now.   In the long run, of course, the 2 have to be fundamentally linked.   Of course "the long run" in these situations can mean upwards of 10 yrs as we've seen in the Japanese Economy.

A surefire way to end an economics article on a high note (at least with an audience like myself) is to quote the Wisdom of Greenspan:

...Alan Greenspan is widely considered a highly successful chairman of the Federal Reserve, but the belief that he has special powers to eliminate the cycle is foolish. In July 2001 Mr Greenspan himself said in testimony to Congress: “Can fiscal and monetary policy acting at their optimum eliminate the business cycle? The answer, in my judgment, is no, because there is no tool to change human nature. Too often people are prone to recurring bouts of optimism and pessimism that manifest themselves from time to time in the build-up or cessation of speculative excesses.”

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