Like they say, the battle may be won but the war is far from over.

Not trying to paint doom and gloom here, just adding some perspective:

Most definitions of recession include more than GDP growth (things which are often mixed in are industrial production or employment). GDP itself has a lot of components, including some like government spending which can be easily changed. Governments around the world have been injecting massive amounts of stimulus money into the economies, in other words to a shot in the arm to attempt to stimulate growth. This is all well and good except for the fact that it may not stimulate growth, and it involves spending gov savings, increasing the national debt and/or printing money out of nothing (i.e. the so called quantitative easing).

Our British friends should take a look at what was done to get this measly 0.1% growth. In the past 3 years, your currency was devalued by 25% vs the dollar and the euro. This decreases your purchasing power for imported products. Massive stimulus money was injected, getting the government further into debt.

This is how you get "out" of a recession the easy way out. Never mind that consumer finances haven't improved much, and unemployment is much higher, with no certainty that the economy won't tank once the government exits its stimulus and the central bank increases interest rates.

PS: Personally I can't complain about the weak GBP though, it makes it very cheap for me to buy games at Amazon UK.

Actually, I agree completely, because the foot was never taken off the gas in the Bush years. Interest rates never came back up and the deficit was allowed to grow larger and larger in order to finance both massive spending and big tax cuts. The plan breaks down if government can't muster the will to pay back the loan after the crisis has passed. Market adjustments do have to happen, they just don't have to be as scary as they were in 2008.

That was just the US Government, though. There were other governments in the world which had the proper fiscal flexibility to stimulate the economy without resorting to helicopters full of cash.

Heck, i'd say it was the Clinton years too... I mean the last time we had a recession was what....  Bush Senior?  

Which was partially what got him to lose vs Clinton really.  The recession combined with fiscally responsible tax raising.

Heh, and not invading iraq for good i remember pissing off even a lot of Democrats.

It's pretty funny really compairing what got Bush Senior and Bush Jr. disliked... exactly opposite things.