As if you didn't know yet, the United States is in a recession.

The nation's business cycle tracker, the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced anticlimactically today that economic activity peaked in December of 2007, right around the time employment numbers started to head south and four months after the start of the credit crunch.

The Bush expansion—as it may come to be known—does not stack up well against the Clinton boom of the 1990s on many measures. For one, the economy grew for 120 straight months in the 1990s versus 73 this decade. Incomes also grew under Clinton while they remained stagnant under Bush.

Gross domestic product per capita, a rough measure of living standards, grew by 51 percent during the tech boom under Clinton versus 33 percent during the real estate boom under Bush II. (But if you compare the average monthly gain in G.D.P.-per-capita, Bush squeaks out a win: 0.45 percent versus 0.42 percent.)

But the main question on everyone's mind now is when will our bust come to an end?

If you look at the yield curve, historically a very reliable indicator of swings in the business cycle, activity should pick up by the end of 2009.

That would mean that the recession will be longer than many professional economists are forecasting. Which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, considering what a bad job forecasters did with predicting this recession.

Another recent reliable indicator is actually the N.B.E.R. recession announcement itself. During the two previous downturns, in 1990 and 2001, the N.B.E.R. made its recession call after the actual downturn had ended. Unfortunately, a global financial disaster makes the chances of that good fortune happening this time around close to zero.

In fact, November marks the eleventh month of the current retrenchment, beating the average length of post-World War II recessions by one month. And if the recession lasts past April, it'll be the longest downturn since the Great Depression.

With the N.B.E.R.'s announcement, the U.S. joins a growing group of rich countries that are also in official recessions—a list that includes Japan, New Zealand, and the 15 countries of the euro zone.

Correction: This article was amended to say that the economy grew for 120 consecutive months in the 1990s, not 120 consecutive quarters.