Bill Greiner, chief investment officer for UMB Bank, says that the U.S. economy will be in recession for most of the next year and that unemployment will exceed 8 percent before it’s over.

His downbeat assessment of the economy came during a breakfast presentation to UMB customers at the Frontenac Hilton. He says the recession probably began this summer and will last until at least the third quarter of next year. The cause is an overdose of debt, he said:

The reason we’re in this recession has nothing to do with the housing market or the price of oil. It has to do with the financial structure of the United States. The entire economy is too highly levered. The housing problem was a result of this issue.

Total debt in the U.S., as a percentage of gross domestic product, rose from 157 percent in 1982 to 357 percent now. It doesn’t have to return to the lower level, he said, but

Consumers have to start getting their balance sheets in order. In a volatile environment, people save more and spend less. Our view is that over the next year or so, the savings rate is probably going to go back to between 7 and 10 percent of personal income.

That would compare with a savings rate that’s been at 1 to 2 percent recently, and has sometimes been negative. The next decade, Greiner says, will look more like the 1950s or ’60s — with a growing government sector, and relatively frequent recessions — than the consumer-led 1980s and ’90s.