What are they basing this on?
My reading of past financial declines indicates we just lost investment funds and that loss is transmitted to the commercial world. When a stock or home price declines that money has evaporated. It will only return when corporations and businesses have earned it back as retained earnings. That money is gone.
When the first financial collapse occurred in midyear 2008 we lost $40 trillion globally. I estimated it would take five years to return to the same level of abundant cash. The current drop is roughly half the previous decline so we just lost an additional $20 trillion globally. That adds two-and-a-half years to the length of recovery. A total of 7 ½ years from 2008.
With the economy of the US growing at less than 1% for the first half of 2011, it is fair to say we are in a recession, right now.
Sorry for the bad news. If we had a government that understood the need to separate the volatile financial world from the stable commercial world we would not be having this type of problem.