I think the lean times are behind us. The recession ended last June. Just need the economy to catch up.
Let's hope you are right.
What economic indicators are you (and your Professors 
) basing it on?
The word on the street is that people are scared and spending less money.
Businesses are leary of the potential costs of Obama/PelosiCare and therefore aren't expanding or hiring.
In fact they are doing the opposite, including buying back their own stocks.
Most voters are pissed at the amount of spending approved by Congress.
Only time will tell.
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research:
The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met yesterday by conference call. At its meeting, the committee determined that a trough in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in June 2009. The trough marks the end of the recession that began in December 2007 and the beginning of an expansion. The recession lasted 18 months, which makes it the longest of any recession since World War II. Previously the longest postwar recessions were those of 1973-75 and 1981-82, both of which lasted 16 months.
In determining that a trough occurred in June 2009, the committee did not conclude that economic conditions since that month have been favorable or that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity. Rather, the committee determined only that the recession ended and a recovery began in that month. A recession is a period of falling economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. The trough marks the end of the declining phase and the start of the rising phase of the business cycle.
Economic activity is typically below normal in the early stages of an expansion, and it sometimes remains so well into the expansion. Q: What about the unemployment rate?
A: The unemployment rate lags behind the NBER cycle dates as a general matter–it reaches a low point somewhat later than the peak in activity and usually remains at high levels after activity reaches its trough. For example, in the recovery beginning in March 1991, the unemployment rate continued to rise for 15 months after the trough. The lag was 19 months in 2001 to 2003.
In the current recovery, the lag was only 4 months, from the trough in activity in June 2009 to the highest point of the unemployment rate in October 2009. But even in September 2010, the unemployment rate remained at high levels, even though these levels were below the maximum reached in October 2009. ---------------
The NBER are not some group of people who come up with these numbers arbitrarily. A recession is based on one thing in particular: shrinkage of the gross domestic product. Unemployment rates, interest rates and other economic factors follow behind the GDP. Think of it this way: when you are diagnosed with a disease, just the knowledge of the existence of it does not cure you. First you realize there is a problem, then you undergo testing, then you are diagnosed and finally you are treated and hopefully cure. The recession is like a national disease. Now that we know it is over, there will still be lingering effects, but those will catch up eventually.
And what you said about businesses is what typically happens during a recovery. Unemployment is slow to increase because even though we are in a recovery, employers don't think so and are cautious about hiring.
