During a press conference today with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, a reporter asked President Bush “how deep and how long will the economic recession be in the United States?” “First of all, we’re not in a recession,” Bush replied, adding, “We’re in a slowdown.” Watch it:

While Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke recently said U.S. GDP “will not grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly,” it is also “hard to find an economist who doesn’t believe the US is either in recession or so close it’s not worth arguing about” as a recent Wall Street Journal poll of economists found.