Lather. Rinse. ...

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: RUNDLES wrap-up - Business after the recession will be different

By many accounts, the Great Recession is either over, or "may be over," or soon will be over, or we are on the verge of an economic rebound. The Dow is on a relatively upward swing, housing has stabilized, retailers have reported lower losses, and a story in mid-September said the nation's banks are showing signs of taking on more risk, although I'm skeptical.

About the only true economic indicator that still looks very bad is employment, and, of course, that would always be the last thing to rebound.

We all knew the recession would end sometime, and we can debate the timing, but that is all economic mumbo-jumbo. No one in any kind of authority even said we were in a recession until months after it apparently started, and I am not sure they are reading the tea leaves correctly this time. About the only thing I am dead positive about is that economists are good at 20/20 hindsight.

But whether the Great Recession is over is not the most interesting aspect of recent economic developments. The real question is "What will the rebound or the end of the recession look like?" II anyone thinks it will simply be a return to the economy of the past 16 years or so, think again. Something tells me we've had a real economic paradigm shift these last two years and that the "recovery" won't be a return to anything, but rather an arrival into an unfamiliar place.

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Take automobiles, for instance. In the 1970s and once in the 1980s when we experienced gas shortages and sudden higher prices, we flirted for a moment with smaller cars, then returned to our big-is-better binge. Not going to happen this time. What's different now is that the car companies, foreign and domestic, are simply slashing their ability to make SUVs, trucks and bigger cars, and are all gearing up big time for smaller cars and every sort of energy efficiency they can come up with. Also on this front, people will be keeping their cars longer. The go-go days of 17 million cars sold per year are gone; 11 million will be the new good year.

How about retail? The nation's retailers have been on a sort of economical tear for several years, the Wal-Mart era if you will, but it never before really put a dent on the high end. That's over. Everyone, the rich and the used-to-be-rich, have joined the rest of...