You could always try Peston's blog.
On a serious note, it's very hard to tell how long it will last, because economic conditions are very different to any recession we have seen previously. The last major recession we saw was due to a collapse in equity value - this meant that the damage was by definition self-contained; if you own 10,000 shares in a company and their value drops to zero, you have lost all the money you had invested in the shares, but nothing more could be taken from you. On the flip side, as an equity holder you had no legal claim on your losses. In the dot-com bust, a few millionaires lost a lot of money, the working men and women among us lost a chunk of savings perhaps, but they still had jobs and homes to go to for the large part.
This recession will be very different, as it is driven by DEBT - people stand to lose a hell of a lot more than a few shares or some savings, because unlike an equity recession, when you default on a credit agreement, the lenders will come after your collateral - i.e. your house, car, etc. This could result in a spiral of shortfalls and writedowns, the end of which is almost impossible to determine; the full extent of the cancer caused by CDOs and their like is still yet to be established.
Millions of families will lose their homes to foreclosures, on a scale like nothing we have ever seen before. House prices have seen a decade of growth that has ground to a halt; people are no longer able to offset debt against the increase in equity that the housing market provided. As a nation we have been living decadently during this time of growth, putting Christmas on credit cards, living in houses secured by mortgages we could not afford. People seemed to think that this overspending would last forever, when it was simply impossible for this to be the case.
How long the recession lasts depends on a number of things: the action our collective governments undertake, how we adjust as consumers, and whether the banks and lenders will be forced to hand on the benefits they have received from the past 12 months' panic, rather than using them to boost their greedy bottom line.
SL.
