The Market Expects The US Economy To Expand For Another 5 Years

The Great Recession officially ended back in June 2009.

We're now in the sixth year of the economic recovery and bull market.

Are we overdue for another recession?

"Recessions don't happen because of a clock ticking," said Deutsche Bank's Torsten Slok. "Recessions happen because of imbalances in the economy or too tight monetary policy... In other words, with the fed funds rate well below neutral for many more years this expansion will likely also continue for many more years."

Even the more hawkish economists don't expect the Federal Reserve to begin raising its benchmark fed funds rate until the middle of 2015. And that's just the starting point.

So what does this mean for the U.S. economy?

"One way to quantify how long time this expansion will continue is to look at the length of expansions and the level of the fed funds rate when expansions ended, i.e. just before recession began," said Slok. "On this measure the market still expects this expansion to continue for another five years or so."

Currently, the Fed's target fed funds rate is in a range of 0.00 % to 0.25%. The Fed's primary dealers see that rate topping out at 3.75%. If we eyeball history, it could take around 60 months to get to that point.