Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz predicts recession's end: not now, but 2012

Did you hear? The recession is over! Or at least it will be in the foreseeable future! And several of our leading economicsages have said so, so that makes it true. Or does it? Not when there's a prominent naysayer like Joseph Stiglitz. The Nobel-winning economist, a former head of the World Bank and now a professor at Columbia University, has a blunt -- if characteristically bearish -- warning of more economic turbulence ahead.

Stiglitz's outlook is anything but rosy. Americans must prepare for the recession to continue until 2012 -- practically, if not technically -- he said this week in an interview with DailyFinance. Stiglitz blasts the use of complex derivatives, which he says go against "the social good," and he reserves special contempt for Goldman Sachs and the $13 billion injection it received from the U.S. as part of AIG's counter-party bailout last year.