Obama's "Recovery Summer" clashes with predictions that another recession is looming

Obama: "Words matter."

Photo: Pax Communications

Barack Obama once observed that "words matter." Ironic coming from a man whose words seem to mean less and less with each passing day. His repeated assurances during the year-long health care debate that Americans who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it have turned out to be pure bunk.

The latest disconnect between Obama's message and everyone else's reality is his "Recovery Summer" program, which kicks into high gear today. The six-week-long public relations push, which

will be emceed by Vice President Joe Biden and Obama himself, seems more self-congratulatory than anything else. It is intended to underscore the jobs "created" by Obama's failed stimulus package. Apart from the fact that the jobs are all temporary, make-work positions, such as highway repair and park maintenance, the PR sell comes at a time when financial analysts are predicting that a second recession is a distinct possibility.

Gary Shilling, of A. Gary Shilling & Company, notes that "the recent troubles in Europe and the subsequent downward shift in the market have changed the perception of what the recovery will be," adding that "the possibility of a double-dip recession" looms large. Economist David Levy, of The Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, paints a grimmer picture, placing the likelihood of a second recession in 2011 at 60 percent. Consumer confidence, he adds, has fallen of late, and so have retailers' profits, signaling lower earnings through the second half of the current year. Perhaps the logo for Obama's "Recovery Summer" victory celebration should be a grasshopper fiddling.

The gravity of the economic forecast is further underscored by newly released jobless benefit figures that show a rise in claims. First-time claims, which have hovered around 450,000 since the beginning of the year, are up to 472,000, according to Labor Department statistics.