It's felt like it for a while, but the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research announced today that we are in a recession and it began in December 200. The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months. Image by Flickr user Randy Son Of Robert used under a Creative Commons license.