Not your father's recession. Maybe not even your grandfather's.
Today's recession, still arguably not finished with all of us, lines up better with pre WWII recessions and depressions, than post WWII recessions, but not in every critical respect...
Another paper has just come out comparing the current recession, in both US-centric and global terms, with worst, best and average recessions of the Post WWII period, as well as recessions prior to WWII (including the Great Depression).
The dotted lines in the following graphs mark the best and worst conditions for any given month from any Post-WWII recession (excluding the present one). They do not represent the "best and worst recessions" of the post-war era. This is a very important point, and one, if confused, becomes a complete distortion. They only represent the best and worst conditions for a given month, regardless of which recession they came from.
Council on Foreign Relations Center for Geoeconomic Studies:
Economic Cycle and Depression Comparisons
How does the current economic and financial downturn match up to past contractions? To answer, we looked at how current economic indicators compare to the past.
...To facilitate comparison, the data is centered around the beginning of the recession (marked by the 0). The average line is not a projection, but rather it serves as a historical framework to view how the cycle has played out in the past. The dotted lines represent a composite minimum and maximum of the relevant statistic from prior cycles.
Tolstoy famously said “Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So too are downturns. The current recession is likely to differ from those of the past. Unlike most recessions this down cycle stemmed from an asset market correction that impaired financial balance sheets and froze the credit system - not by monetary tightening...
FULL REPORT HERE (PDF)