While not the longest expansion since WW II, it was considerably longer than the 57-month average since then.On the heels of the record 120-month business expansion in the 1990s, the new century had started off with a bang.

By the middle of 2007, however, excessive house foreclosures and latent risks related to a blizzard of securitized high-risk mortgage loans gripped worldwide credit markets, creating a wintry mood of paranoia among financial institutions about lending to one another. Securities markets everywhere started to crumble. In the US, the S&P 500 Index was poised a few points above 1500 in June of 2007, teetering on a slippery slope, before collapsing to 757.13 in the first quarter of 2009.

In This Recession, Two Crises Face Government Officials

By December 2007 the recession had taken over, and arguments that the stock market is a leading indicator of economic activity in the US gained new advocates. It had again correctly called a recession. However, the situation has become unique this time, for the government has dual nemeses in this crisis - first, another cyclical contraction, which many economists say could become severe, compounded by the credit market malaise.