If the money had reached consumers in weeks instead of several months, the boost to consumer spending would have sent manufacturers scrambling to ramp up production instead of reducing inventories, and they wouldn't have been able to get the goods from China on such short notice. That's why prompt stimulus could have been unusually potent this time. Keeping the economy out of recession for the time being would have helped to stabilize the housing market (because in a recession, job losses make foreclosures mount) and bought some time to unfreeze the financial markets.

But policy makers may not have understood the importance of the timing of stimulus, since they were content to let the rebates start reaching consumers several months later, rather than demanding innovative ways to let stimulus reach consumers much sooner, as was needed. I don't know whether it was bureaucratic compulsion to adhere to business as usual or ideological considerations that impeded this effort to get money to consumers right away. But it's as if the medics had arrived and taken a quick decision to administer CPR ... in a few months!

For the purpose of averting a recession, several months is a lifetime -- after all, the last two recessions lasted just eight months each. So, despite a unique opportunity, fiscal stimulus is likely to arrive too late to avert a recession.

Only this month, the Fed has finally begun to take aggressive and unorthodox steps to stabilize the housing and credit markets. While such actions met the need of the hour, they're unlikely to have the same impact today that they would have had a few months ago.

Already, before last Christmas, WLI growth had plunged to its lowest reading since the 2001 recession. Yet ECRI held off on its recession call, because objectively, there was this unusual chance to head off a recession.

The Crashing Column