Re: Official recovery is two years old this month.
The National Bureau of Economic Research, which seems to be the go-to place for deciding when recessions start and end, officially declared the last one to have started in December of 2007 and ended in June of 2009. These dates are usually announced a year or so after they occur. The start and finish dates often have nothing to do with what the economy is doing at exactly that time.
Here's their list of the last four recessions and their durations:
12/07 - 6/09 18 months
3/01 - 11/01 8 months
7/90 - 3/91 8 months
7/81 - 11/82 16 months