That foreboding sense of financial doom and gloom? It’s not just in your head or your 401(k) statement.

The experts at the National Bureau of Economic Research have pronounced the United States officially in a recession. Turns out, this one hit in December – as in last December when some economists were still pooh-poohing such a notion.

The nation probably won’t be so lucky as to have a repeat of 2001, when the recession almost came and went before the bureau declared there was one. A retroactive announcement certainly would have been preferable, akin to your doctor diagnosing cancer after it’s cured.

The bureau’s announcement, while no surprise, does serve to reinforce what many Americans know in their gut: For anyone who missed the Great Depression, this might be the worst recession of their lifetimes.

But this financial malaise has no sure antidote. Washington, D.C., is engaged in a $1.4 trillion strategy based largely on trial and error, mostly the latter.

Propping up the financial sector hasn’t freed up credit and boosted consumer confidence as promised, so now congressional Democrats and the incoming Obama administration want to try bailing out taxpayers and the states.

Governors – and some noted economists – argue convincingly that the country cannot go wrong with a quick infusion of cash aimed at building roads, bridges, schools and other public works projects. But they aren’t the only ones with hands out, and the size of the Democrats’ Main Street economic stimulus is rising faster than the Dow is falling.

The federal government surely won’t get out of this economic mess by watching the deficit too closely. But deficits do matter, and the kitchen-sink phenomenon that plagues omnibus spending only sets us up to further leverage our future to foreign investors.

No one has the answer, only pieces of it. The economy isn’t likely to be fixed by government intervention or the free market alone, and the right mix is likely to become clear only in hindsight.

Just pray that by next December the folks at the National Bureau of Economic Research can agree that whatever the federal government did to jolt the economy worked.