Winter is coming but how do we know where we are in a recession?

When we talk about an economic winter, really, we are referring to a recession. We have a technical definition of a recession but there are little or no common definitions for all the possibilities around this technical definition. For example, what is considered a ‘mild' recession, or a ‘harsh' recession and when does a recession stop and a depression begins? The prevailing definition of a recession - two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth - was first introduced in an 1974 Op-Ed in the New York Times by professor Julius Shiskin. Private markets to face reality che...