How many years it will take the S&P/ASX300 index to recover?

Your right the reason for this recession is different from the last one and most recessions have different causes which is pretty much a trueism.

List of recessions in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This list shows a basic overview of the major recessions in the United States, probably not a perfect source being from wikipedia but shows that there were many varying causes for the different recession in the US over the last 150 years. Several involved banking collapses and many involved bubbles that eventually burst.

Every one pretty much caused by something different, the common factor not being what caused the recession but the fact that each recession ended eventually and the sky didnt fall. This recession is probably worse then most others but i dont think ignoring history is smart because history shows that even the worst depression on record ended and the people who claimed capitalism would destroy the country each time were proven wrong.

Im sure there are 10 things about this recession that are different to the ones before but history has shown that the odds of the recession ending and a period of growth ensuing are pretty high. Its just a matter of when the markets will recover to previous levels, which i think will be in 3 years 2 months and 19 days. Just joking I have no idea.

I very much agree with your point that ignoring history is always very naive, but in this crisis to compare apples with apples from a historical perspective the 1930's is probably the most recent recession that is comparable, not in the sense of depth or potential severity, but in terms of the "style" of recession, as in the crisis we are having now is similar to what occurred in the 1930s.

I'm not saying this recession will be shorter or longer than the great depression or deeper or shallower (I've already mentioned that there are just too many variables at this stage) but I still don't like reading mass media making comparisons between what we are going through now and what we have gone through in the last 50 odd years, because the last 50 years really isn't very relevant for the most part.