Zandi sketched out his "timeline to recovery," which sounds fairly optimistic. The stock market bottomed out in the first three months of 2009, he believes. (He'd originally expected this to happen last November; instead it was in March.) Home prices should reach their lowest point by the end of the year. ("I feel very confident about this.") The fiscal-stimulus program should start to work by this summer. Unemployment will peak in the second quarter of 2010. And economic expansion should begin again in the fall of 2010. "My point is, things can turn pretty quickly," Zandi said, chuckling. "How's that for a happy ending?" 

 
Zandi is considered a professional, FWIW 😉