Rossell names a number of factors leading the economy to recovery, not only consumer savings rates but housing prices that have finally come down from nosebleed level into line with median income. But on top of that, she believes that the recovery will be led by exports, as the declining value of the dollar (with the tacit help of the government) has made American products more attractive to a number of resilient economies such as India, China and Brazil that have been insulated somewhat from the downturn and held on to their redoubtable purchasing power.

Meanwhile, there is a debate about two other problems: the fear about both continued punishing deflation (the kind that has Japan's economy wrapped around the axle) and longer term inflation (a worry prompted by the vast infusions of government money flooding into the economy and long-term deficits).

Rossell says that the government stimulus was necessary but could lead to long-term inflation.  "If you spray enough money on this economy," she said, "prices will eventually go up. I believe next year you're going to see inflation rates-which are almost zero right now-I think they could be at 3%, 4% much quicker than many people do, simply because of the money growth."

Jordan, however, thinks that despite the risk of some headline inflation due to commodity price spikes, he believes long-term inflation overall is not a big worry for the U.S. economy. There is too much available labor pushing down wages, he says, and meanwhile, consumers have stopped demanding a lot of things they don't need. The Internet has removed the middleman from a lot of business. Thus he believes the U.S. is still on a long-term deflationary trend and will be for some time.

Stepping into the unenviable position of steward of the money supply is the Fed, which must walk a tightrope and decide when to raise interest rates. Doing it too early in a worry about inflation could choke off the recovery and undo the stimulus. Waiting too long means perhaps a mess like the housing bubble, which led to the mortgage crisis and then the eventual crash of Wall Street giants.

"Bernanke is a student of the Depression," says Canally. "He doesn't want to see mistakes repeated. He doesn't want inflation to get out of control because they'll have to hike further and faster later. So they're walking a tightrope."

Investing in 2010
Recessions follow certain patterns, say economists. At first, companies are cutting back everywhere as a response to declining demand. That allows them to go into upturns leaner, meaner and more profitable. And some of the companies leading the way are ones that have increased their productivity, often through technology spending.

Thus, says Higgins, "The sector that leads in an economic recovery is the technology sector, the reason being that it's inexpensive for corporations to go out and buy new computers-much, much cheaper than hiring new workers. It goes hand-in-hand with enhancing labor productivity. In the third quarter [of 2009], you saw an increase: Though overall business investment was still down, investment in software and equipment was up for the quarter."

Wasif Latif, the vice president of equity investments at USAA, also sees IT doing well, as well as health care equipment and services and consumer staples. "You've seen pretty strong rallies in the information technology or IT sectors," he says. "They have a bit more safety in the way they're positioned because they have just gone through the dot-com bust, so they were a bit more conservative in some of their spending and cash positions and things like that." Health care equipment, meanwhile, has been too beaten down, he thinks, by the health care legislation fracas in Washington, and that has offered investment opportunity.

Jordan has also been investing in health care, though he's cut back from highs of last year, mainly because of concerns about the bills in Congress. He also ducked out of financials completely. The market had priced them for apocalypse last year, and now some analysts think the fire sale prices last March attracted too many people, which cut down the risk to reward appeal.