(HOST) There's been a tendency lately for economic pundits to avoid using the word "recession."   Economist and commentator Art Woolf says it's beginning to sound like deja vu - all over again.

(WOOLF)  Back in the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter appointed Alfred Kahn to be his top economic advisor.  Kahn happens to be UVM President Daniel Fogel's father-in-law.  He soon became worried that the unstable economic conditions of the time were leading the nation into recession.

President Carter was reluctant to have his top aide utter the "R" word in public - and ordered Kahn to stop using it.  Kahn agreed and instead of using the R word in his speeches used the B word - as in banana.

Whether he talked about a banana or a recession, Kahn's speeches didn't affect the economy, but it was somewhat odd to hear an economist talking about whether the economy was in a banana.

Today we are in a similar situation.  Recently, Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, said that a recession is possible. It was the first time he had used the R word, and it made quite a media splash.

Recessions - when they begin and when they end - are determined not by any government agency but by a small group of economists who are part of the prestigious, and private, National Bureau of economic Research - or NBER.

Although the conventional measure of a recession is two consecutive quarters of falling Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, the economic gurus at NBER have a much looser definition of a recession.  It is "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale and retail sales."

Now, recessions have been a regular feature of the American economic landscape.  Since the end of the Second World War, the economy has experienced a recession about every five years, each lasting, on average, 10 months.

But beginning in the early 1980s that cycle changed, and since then the U.S. has experienced only two recessions, and both were mild and short: they lasted only 8 months.  This so-called "great moderation" is one of the great economic success stories of the past quarter-century.

Vermont's economy rises and falls with the nation's.  When recessions or economic slowdowns hit, Vermont's unemployment rises.  People spend less, retailers are hurt, state government tax revenues fall, and spending has to be cut.  If that sounds familiar, it's because that's what's happening now.

There is no doubt that the U.S. economy, and Vermont's, are slowing.  Whether, and when, the NBER officially says we're in a recession is almost irrelevant.  There's not much difference between an outright decline in economic activity and economic stagnation - or even sluggish economic growth.

A growing economy brings prosperity and a rising standard of living.  2008 will go down in history as a year when that didn't happen - banana or not.