Business economists think the U.S. economy will get back to where it was before the recession by the end of next year. But employment won’t reach pre-recession levels until 2012, Lynn Reaser, president of the National Association for Business Economics, told a group of her Richmond colleagues yesterday. “It’s not a roaring recovery, but certainly not an anemic one,“ she told the Richmond Association for Business Economics.

The average amateur male golfer believes he can consistently drive the ball about 222 yards. In reality, one study says, he typically can drive it only about 192 yards. This same sort of psychological self-delusion, applied in finance and economics, has contributed to some spectacular economic bubbles, including the latest one that has roiled the world economy, one financial analyst said in Richmond yesterday.

About $135 billion in federal economic-stimulus money is being pumped directly into construction projects. That will do some good for the hard-hit construction industry, but it will take time, an economist for a national construction trade group said in Richmond yesterday. “It is the largest-ever piece of legislation for construction,“ said Kenneth Simonson, chief economist of the Associated General Contractors of America. But even the so-called “shovel-ready” projects targeted by the stimulus take time to get going, Simonson said at a Richmond Association for Business Economics meeting.

Two Virginia banking industry experts—E. Joseph Face Jr., banking commissioner for the Virginia State Corporation Commission, and Bruce T. Whitehurst, president and chief executive officer of the Virginia Bankers Association—spoke yesterday to the Richmond Association for Business Economics about the financial crisis. How did it happen, where do we stand now and where it is leading us? Here are excerpts from their question-and-answer session with about 70 businesspeople and economists.