He can also take pride that it has been more than eight years since the last American recession ended.
Our spending now is shaped by when we think the recession will end.
The recession of the early 1990's ended in March 1991, when the unemployment rate was 6.8 percent.
The American public simply doesn't believe that the recession ended in the middle of last year.
But each recession did end after the Fed reversed policy and cut interest rates.
The most recent recession, many economists agree, ended late last year.
The committee has not yet announced when the recession ended, but it is likely to choose a month around the beginning of this year.
As it happens, that decision came one month after the recession had ended.
Wall Street seems to be confident that the recession will soon end.
In the 1890s, Dow saw that the recession was ending.