Did someone mention an economic recovery

If so, the he or she did not rely upon the work of Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O'Rourke to make this claim. These two economists recently concluded that the world economy is:

…tracking or doing even worse than the Great Depression, whether the metric is industrial production, exports or equity valuations. Focusing on the US causes one to minimise this alarming fact. The "Great Recession" label may turn out to be too optimistic. This is a Depression-sized event.

That said, we are only one year into the current crisis, whereas after 1929 the world economy continued to shrink for three successive years. What matters now is that policy makers arrest the decline.