Seeking Alpha Seeking Alpha Portfolio App for iPad Profile| Send
Message| (214)    The question on the next recession is when,
not whether. If you call it like ERCI did in September 2011 and
it does not occur until mid-2012 then people will call you a
bum. Of course, ERCI claims they called for a recession by
mid-2012 and there is a lot of data coming in that says a
recession could be here by then so maybe their call is not so
bummish. Let's handicap the possible start of this recession.
Recessions are officially declared by the National Bureau of
Economic Research (NBER), usually a year or so after the
beginning of a recession. The Great Recession started in
December 2007 but wasn't called until November 28, 2008. While
this seems to be a long time, the NBER pushed the envelope of
economic theory in order to call it this quickly.  NBER had to
use alternative measures of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as
conventional "product-side" (NBER's term) or "expenditure-based"
(Fed term) GDP measures were still indicat