When did we get out of the last recession?
The last recession ended when we sank into Great Depression II, roughly about 2009. The TARP bailout disguised the real situation, but we were definitely on a downward spiral.
This current situation is as bad in real terms as it was in 1938. The Great Depression I had actually started BEFORE the 1929 stock market crash, but that finally drove home the near-stall in international trade that had preceded the reaction in the stock markets. People often think that 1933, the first year of the FDR administration, as being an “awful” year, but things were being “fixed”. The result of all the “fixes”? The Depression was MUCH worse in 1938, and we did not begin to recover until the war production began to crank up and we started sending war material to England in 1940, when England was already in desperate straits and fighting for their very existence. England was shipping TONS of silver bullion to the US to pay for our production of the basic war materials, as our industrial might was vastly greater than England’s, just waiting to be given direction.