A lot of the small shops near the towns around me have closed. Including the one I worked at. Hopefully once things turn back around, some of them will be back.

Well a recssion as termed by NBER involves many factors, not just employment:

"a significant decline in [the] economic activity spread across the country, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP growth, real personal income, employment (non-farm payrolls), industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales."

So it could end even if people are losing their jobs still.

I agree, but with unemployment so high that has to have an impact on future consumption, wouldn't you agree?

We have literally millions of people going out of work, losing their homes (or having cheaper homes), paying higher interest rates on mortgages and credit cards. Unemployment further pushes this vicious circle, resulting in low sales for retail, manufacturers, who then have to lay off more people...

With consumers accounting for 70% of the US economy I would be very surprised if the recession could end when consumers are constantly getting poorer.

Well I think this winter will be a good barometer of how much longer this recession will last, if things uptick enough, we could see an end to the recession by early next year.  If comsumers are still lethargic this holidy it'll be a sign that it'll be a while yet.

If the government had done the right thing, this would already be over (the downturn that is).

Unemployment is going to hit some maximum. Let's say that number is 18%. If the government had not bailed anyone out, we would have hit that number very fast. Once all the busneses that suck fail, like AIG, GM, some banks, Chrysler, etc..., what's left will do nothing but get stronger. You no longer have trillions of government dollars feeding dying companies. You now have the good ones left to thrive. You also have openings for new ones.

All companies that survived would be on an upswing at the moment. The way it is now, every employee is worried about getting laid off. Who is going to make a big purchase (like a car or house) if they are scared of possibly losing there job?

If we had gotten to 18% in a month and not 3 years, then we would have 3 years of additional purchasing by the employees and companies who were growing over those three years.

If the government had done the right thing and used the systems we have in place for such issues (the bankruptcy courts), we would be in a much better place.

The way it's going to be now, is we are going to have obligated our self to trillions of dollars in bailout for future generations to pay, years of damaged revenue, and a corporate base where the best companies were not allowed to thrive, weakening our ability to thrive.

All the time, the criminals in office who orchestrated this are telling us they are saving us. It's sickening. 

And my dad is one of them XD...no not XD...he needs to pay us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could be wrong, but I think one of the longer term consequences of this recession will be a "generation" of people who develop a new perspective on credit ...

I was raised with a (fairly) old-school perspective on debt in that you only go into debt for things you (really) need and can't afford another way; basically a house and possibly a car are (just about) the only reasons a person should have personal debt. This was not the standard view of debt that most people had leading up to the recession, and for decades the savings rates of most people has been negative due to people buying stuff they didn't want or need on credit.

Now this trend has changed recently and (probably for the first time in my life) the average savings rate is a positive number. While there are several experts who believe this is a short term trend, I think that people (in general) are really starting to understand why they were told to save money for a rainy day and their entire outlook on things has changed. With how our economy is really a flow-through system and "one dollar" cycles through the system producing countless dollars worth of goods over time, the shift from a -4% savings rate to a 2% to 4% savings rate could drastically lower overall production.

Over the long run this is not a bad thing because you can buy more goods for the same ammount of money if paying with saved cash than if it was bought using credit, but the transition from a debt driven economy to a cash driven economy will have (a lot of) short and mid-term pain.

@HappySqurriel: I totally agree... In my family, no one uses credit cards as debt, debt is reserved for buying a house (not even a car).

Even with this philosophy, one can still spend money on lots of discretionary stuff... it just takes a few years to ramp up savings so that you have a safety cushion, and then you can have a lot of stuff without putting yourself in financial danger. You can even start spending right from the point when you have a job, it's not that hard to save 10-30% of your paycheck every month while still having a great life.

I think in Europe, people have always saved more money than in USA, but in recent years there were more and more people starting to take up a lot of debt... I'm sure that as you say, this recession will teach a valuable (but sometimes painful) lesson to many people.

People in USA who were or are now poor will have even more pain than in other places, as the comparatively low US taxes mean that states are having a hard time providing welfare... if I understood correctly California is issuing IOUs instead of cash to welfare recipients.

Hey it's the same in my family.  Crazy.

I blame Obama