Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Well, in a phrase: bargain hunters. What happens is that at some point, there will be enough investors, there will be enough entrepreneurs who see bargain prices for things like stocks and real estate and even workers in terms of lower wages paid to hire them that these investors and entrepreneurs will start buying more stocks. They'll start buying more real estate. They'll start hiring more workers, and as this happens, that will pull the economy up. More spending will occur in the economy, and that will effectively bring us out of a recession. So what this means is that the softness that we're now seeing, for example, in prices – and we have gone through a couple on months in which prices have gone down and the softness we're seeing in workers' wages and salaries; that is, workers are not being able to bargain for big increases in their wages and salaries - that softness is really a necessary first step to ending the recession. But the big wild card here, of course, is how long does it take for these investors and entrepreneurs to perceive the bargains, and when is the bottom of those bargains, when is the best time for them to move. That's the big unanswered question. But I do know that it will eventually come."