Note: This feature length story by Chris McMahon originally appeared in the March 2009 issue of Futures Magazine. Link to original @ Futures Magazine As Americans headed into the holidays, the National Bureau of Economic Research threw a wet blank on the season by acknowledging in early December that the United States was in a recession and had been since November 2007. Retail spending crumbled and the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index declined to 38.6 in December, before falling to 37.7, an historic low, in January. Even worse, the nation's unemployment rate rose to 7.6% from 6.8% in December. Payrolls fell 598,000 and the number of unemployed increased to 11.6 million. Leading economic indicators and the major equity indexes reflected the volatility and downward trajectory of the economy, entering a precipitous decline since peaking in October 2007, when the Dow was above 14,000 and the S&P 500 traded above 1400. In late January, both indexes were down more
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