On June 17th, 2010, the following appeared on whitehouse.gov:

The Administration today kicks off “Recovery Summer,” a six-week-long focus on the surge in Recovery Act infrastructure projects that will be underway across the country in the coming months – and the jobs they’ll create well into the fall and through the end of the year.  The Recovery Act has already funded tens of thousands of projects and put about 2.5 million Americans to work, but summer 2010 is actually poised to be the most active Recovery Act season yet, with tens of thousands of projects underway across the country that will help to create jobs for American workers and economic growth for businesses, large and small.  For example:

• Highway Projects: There will be six times as many highway projects underway in July 2010 as in July 2009 – projects will surge from 1,750 last summer to over 10,000 this summer. 
• Clean and Drinking Water: This summer over 2,800 clean and drinking water projects will be underway versus just over 100 last summer – more than 20 times as many.
• Home Weatherization: This summer, 82,000 homes will be weatherized versus 3,000 last summer – 27 times as many homes this summer as last.
• National Parks: This July, nearly 800 projects will be underway at national parks versus just over 100 last July – 8 times as many this summer.

As part of Recovery Summer, President Obama, Vice President Biden and other Administration officials will travel to more than two dozen Recovery Act project sites in the coming weeks, highlighting the surge in project activity and the Recovery Act’s steady climb to 3.5 million jobs by the end of the year. 

Sound’s great, huh?  So did the ads for the movie MacGruber.

The national reality that our economy is moving with all the speed of a dead tortoise has been reinforced today as the government just announced that the nation’s second-quarter growth was virtually non-existent.

Economists (the biggest guessers since Miss Cleo) were looking for the Commerce Department to revise its estimate of growth in gross domestic product to 1.3% or lower, down from 2.4%.  It was just announced to be 1.6 %.

How’s that Hopey-Changey Thing workin’ out for y’all?

This bad GDP number has put the cherry on top of a week’s worth of horrible numbers in the housing and financial markets, just in time for the Republicans to use this information against the Democrats as we head into November’s midterm elections.

Unfortunately for the Dems, while Americans are usually an optimistic and forgiving people, they also have a long memory and will remember who really ruined America’s economy.

According to Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at Cal State Channel Islands and former chief economist for Wells Fargo:

Housing is in the tank. Confidence is going down. The stock market is going down. It’s hard to imagine how consumers will spend.

Yeah, Doc.  It’s pretty difficult to spend money when you can’t even pay your monthly bills.
He places the probability that economic growth will slide back into negative territory — a double-dip recession — at “40% and going up.”

Ahhh, the wonders of an advanced education.

On Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average closed below the 10,000 benchmark after receiving worrisome new economic reports.

According to the government, while initial unemployment claims last week dipped to 473,000, from 504,000 the week before, the four-week average still reached its highest point since November.  Unemployment was at 9.5% nationally in July and higher in many states, including 14.3% in Nevada, 13.1% in Michigan and 12.3% in California.

And a mortgage trade group said that, while foreclosures overall continued to ebb, more homeowners fell behind on their payments for the second straight quarter. With unemployment numbers showing no signs of getting better, foreclosures could soon ramp up again.

Those reports followed news earlier in the week that home sales had fallen to their lowest level in more than a decade, even though mortgage interest rates that are at their lowest levels in nearly 40 years.

Bart van Ark, chief economist for the Conference Board, a business research group, said:

All the indicators at the moment are pointing in the wrong direction.

He doesn’t think the nation will dip back into recession, but said the risk of that happening was rising amid continuing high unemployment:

We are in the slow lane at this moment.  The risk of things turning wrong and then dropping the economy into recession is significant.

Today, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will attempt to explain this tanking economy to a meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyo., of central bankers, finance ministers, academics and industry executives from around the world.

Amid false hopes brought by a  modest recovery early this year, the central bank began pulling back its extraordinary support. But as growth slowed, the Fed began shifting from exit strategy to re-entry.

The fed announced this month that it would resume buying U.S. Treasury bonds to hold down longer-term interest rates. Fed policymakers said they made the move because the recovery “appeared more modest in the near term than had been anticipated.”

Translation:  Oops.

Experts say that with the Fed’s benchmark short-term interest rate already near zero, it’s policy options are limited.

For instance, even though the central bank’s purchases of mortgage-backed securities have helped push mortgage rates to record lows, home sales still went in the porcelain receptacle after a federal tax credit expired at the end of April.

According to Sohn, among the limited moves Bernanke could take is eliminating the interest rate the Fed pays banks on about $1 trillion in cash reserves, making it more attractive to lend the money,  The Fed also could loosen the reins on banks it regulates, also freeing up more money for loans.

The White House will be among those paying close attention to Bernanke’s remarks today.

Scooter will probably have a satellite feed up in Martha’s Vineyard, as he and First Mama devour another lobster.  Tough life.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R- Ohio) told Scooter this week that he needed to fire his economic team .  Fat chance of that, especially since the administration remains bragadocious about their efforts to stimulate the economy being  responsible for a “Recovery Summer”.

However, Obama is very aware that this economy that he is responsible for is a political liability.   The president interrupted his vay-cay on Wednesday to hold a conference call with his economic “brain-trust”, including Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and top economic advisor Larry Summers, to discuss “recent data reports, global markets and economic growth.”

Scooter and his minions will not be able to prop up the economy with more of our money because the attention that the out-of-control federal budget deficit has raised along with last year’s ineffective $814-billion “Porkulus” legislation.   Obama’s economic failures are providing excellent cannon fodder for Republicans as they campaign for the Midterm Elections.

The Congressional Budget Office published a dubious report this week that the stimulus raised the nation’s economic output, or gross domestic product, from April through June, and lowered the unemployment rate by as many as 1.8 percentage points.

However, in the same breath, the CBO said the effects of the stimulus on GDP “are expected to gradually diminish during the second half of 2010 and beyond.”

Our economy started this freefall in December 2007, as rising numbers of homeowners defaulted on subprime mortgages and housing prices collapsed. The descent sped up in 2008, as unemployment grew, banks suffered huge losses and the nation’s financial markets teetered on the verge of collapse.

The economy began a modest improvement last summer but its momentum has stalled. The initial estimate of economic output in the three months ended June 30 was 2.4%, down from 3.7% in the first quarter and 5% in the final three months of last year.

But that second-quarter figure could be cut nearly in half after more analysis of data, such as business inventories and exports. Growth near 1% is “virtually nothing,” Sohn said:

This is a harbinger of weak economic growth to come for quite some time.  Right now, it’s hard to see where we will get any sort of strength.

The strength of America has always come from her people, not from the government.  The only way out of this economic catastrophe is for Obama and his academically-experienced useful idiots to get out of the way and let America work.  Extend the tax cuts.  Repeal Obamacare.  And get your up-turned noses out of our lives.