WASHINGTON — Transfixed by the daily spectacle of dismal economic news and wild Wall Street swings, few Americans have looked up to see what a wide array of economists say lies beyond the immediate crisis.
And with good reason: The picture isn't pretty.
The sleek racing machine that was the U.S. economy is unlikely to return any time soon despite the huge repair efforts now underway. Instead, it probably will continue to sputter and threaten to stall for years to come.
The prospects are so gloomy, according to a recent study, that unemployment may be slightly higher by the time President-elect Barack Obama's first term ends.
The damage done by plunging house and stock prices, the failure of other major economies to be independent sources of growth and hidden weaknesses in America's past performance have crippled nearly every actor in the nation's economic drama.
None -- save perhaps the government -- retains the power to push the economy back to speeds it regularly achieved during much of the last generation, economists say.
The result: An economy that once averaged 3% or better annual growth would be lucky to grow 2% a year during the entirety of the new president's term.
"That is going to feel like stagnation" to most people, said John Lonski, chief economist at Moody's Investors Service.
"We're in a post-bubble global recession, and post-bubble recessions are lethal for growth," Stephen S. Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, said from Beijing. "It will be a long time before the world experiences anything more than anemic recovery."
Obama and his economic aides seem to understand the painful prospects they face.
Obama misses no chance to temper hopes for a quick and complete comeback. A recently released study by Christina Romer, his nominee to chair the Council of Economic Advisors, and Vice President-elect Joe Biden's chief economist, Jared Bernstein, concluded that, even with an $825-billion stimulus package, the unemployment rate at the end of Obama's first term would be one-half to one full percentage point above where it was before the start of the recession.
That would mean as many as 1.5 million additional jobless workers. And some independent economists say that number could be much higher.
What most worries analysts is not a cataclysm such as the Great Depression but the sort of economic morass into which Japan fell after its stock and real estate markets burst in the late 1980s and early '90s.
