Is the US in a Depression?

Richard Posner argues that we are:

As Becker points out, the real significance of the increase in the unemployment rate from 9.6 percent in October to 9.8 percent in November is not the .2 percent increase, which is within the margin of error, but that it signals the depth of the economic hole that the country has fallen into. It is now three years since the depression—and it is a depression, not a “recession” or even a “Great Recession”—those are euphemisms—began, and it did not end last summer when GDP stopped falling (by that measure, the Great Depression ended in 1933). The proper comparison is between actual GDP and the GDP trend line (3 percent a year)—until actual GDP rejoins the trend line, the economy is in depression. Real (inflation-adjusted) GDP is roughly the same today that it was three years ago; it “should” be 9 percent higher—which would make GDP almost $1.5 trillion greater today than it is. The economy cannot rejoin the trend line with unemployment as high as it is.