Recession Now a Year Old....Thanks for the Update

News just in from the National Bureau of Economic Research that the economy entered a recession in December of 2007. I repeat--just how useful a term is "recession" if we have to wait until a year's worth of data (well, really only two quarters) is accumulated and analyzed before it can be declared? Are there not a series of in-stream measurements that can be looked at together that correlate with a contracting economy? Or do we simply prefer as a society to talk about whether or not we're in recession while the economists gather the data?