The United States, as any other modern industrialized economy in the world has experienced a series of ups and downs throughout history. Official records, date economic recessions as far back as the 1850s. Experts, track these economic fluctuations using the business cycle. The modern business cycle, was codified and analyzed by Arthur Burns and Wesley Mitchell in their 1946 book Measuring Business Cycles. This cycle is characterized by periods of economic prosperity, usually referred to as expansions or booms; followed by periods of economic decline called recessions or depressions. Although, the word “cycle” suggests regularity or stability, an economy has no real consistency between cycles of expansion and recession. Expansion