While one’s stomach feels a rare sense of calm with news of a likely Greek rescue plan, a possible end to the U.S. budget/debt ceiling impasse and a good chance for a standard NFL season (one of my fantasy leagues is moving to an auction format this year, which excites me way more than watching the Dow soar on news of a debt-ceiling deal), the boom-and-bust emotional cycle we remain stuck in creates troubling blind spots.

Here’s the problem: when we’re in bust mode, we tend to batten down the hatches, rein in spending and wait out the storm (and spew clichés, too). When we’re in boom mode, we tend to hire, spend and go on merger and acquisitions (M&A) sprees. This behavior blinds us to opportunities. A new study suggests that business leaders, especially those involved with M&A decisions, should rethink this approach.

The KPMG study finds that deals completed during the recession were more likely to create value than deals that take place during economic boom years. This suggests that CFOs, CEOs and other top decision-makers are sharper when evaluating M&A opportunities during down economies; not only do they focus on making the right deal, but they seem to be more adept when it comes to execution and integration.

This is not to say that all deals completed during recessions succeed. The report highlights several areas in need of improvement along with some neat ah-has, including the following:

• As the downturn emerged corporates became more cautious and were not willing to overpay for acquisitions, this resulted in an increase in the proportion of deals enhancing value, from 27 percent in 2005-06 to 31 percent in 2007-09

• While most respondents performed financial due diligence (81 percent), surprisingly, less than half of those surveyed performed strategic (45 percent), IT (42 percent) or HR (38 percent) due diligence; and

• 44 percent of all survey respondents said they spent little or no time investigating the potential synergies of the deal, and only 22 percent of respondents said they spent a great deal of time on synergy analysis.