Partly to prepare the way for those unwelcome prospects, Obama has been traveling the country warning that fighting the recession will be expensive and cautioning against expectations of a quick recovery.
"We will need to do everything in the short term to get our economy moving again, while at the same time recognizing that we have inherited a trillion-dollar deficit, and we need to begin restoring fiscal discipline and taming our exploding deficits over the long term," Obama said before signing the stimulus bill in Denver on Tuesday. "None of this will be easy."
To further amplify that message, Obama will convene a White House summit on financial responsibility Monday, in part to burnish his claim that he will practice thrift once the present emergency has passed.
But recovery still appears a long way off, especially after last week.
The Federal Reserve downgraded its 2009 forecast, projecting the economy would shrink as much as 1.3% and the unemployment rate would rise to as high as 8.8%. It is at 7.6% now.
Stock markets here and abroad tanked as fears rose that the deepening worldwide recession would lead the Obama administration to nationalize major banks. (The White House said Friday that it does not plan to take that step.)
But beyond the markets' passing fears or hopes about specific government policies or other developments, what was really eroding securities values was the objective reality of economic trouble almost everywhere -- with no clear notion of what could reverse the tide.
General Motors and Chrysler submitted financial viability plans to the federal government asking for nearly $22 billion in government loans to stave off imminent bankruptcy -- on top of the $17.4 billion they already received.
And on Wednesday, Obama unveiled a housing foreclosure plan partially funded with $50 billion from what remains of the financial rescue fund -- called TARP, for Troubled Assets Relief Program -- approved in the waning days of the Bush administration. That increased the likelihood that Obama will need to ask for more TARP money for the still-being-developed public/private partnership to buy "toxic" assets clogging the balance sheets of financial institutions.
Only about $300 billion remains in the original $700-billion TARP fund, which also must pay for any additional loans to the automakers.
