It's not with a head-in-the-sand mentality that I feel like a bratty kid putting my fingers in my ears and singing "la-la-la-la-la!", but am I the only one tired of hearing the daily punditry of "We're now in a recession!" juxtaposed with another's "The housing crash has ended!"?

Despite today's data-driven, analyze-everything news cycle, I don't believe recessions can be readily identified at their beginning and end points in real-time fashion. It's always best identified in hindsight.

A higher-up at one of the major title companies I work with told me yesterday that their national economist had recently reported to their firm that recessions tend to last on average just shy of 36 months. His conclusion was that we were in month 27.

As far as this story from the AP goes, I at least took one finger out of an ear to click it.