Gloom and doom

Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers believes that the U.S. faces the most serious economic and financial stresses "in at least a generation - and possibly much longer." Summers, the former president of Harvard (and, it should be said, known for provocative comments), called for more aggressive government action. At an economic summit sponsored by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, he said it would be "a grave mistake to believe in self-equilibrating properties of the economy or markets for large shocks." Here's the WSJ story. Actually, you're hearing a lot of dispiriting talk in the wake of a today’s report showing that 63,000 payroll jobs were lost in February. That's the fastest falloff in five years - and comes on top of a revised January decline of 22,000 jobs. “One month you can dismiss,” Ethan Harris, chief United States economist at Lehman Brothers, told the NYT. “Two months is a lot harder.” President Bush said he was confident that the stimulus package would be the “booster shot” the economy needs. (Does anyone really believe that?) Here are some snippets from economists surveyed by the WSJ:

--The debate should no longer be about whether there is or is not a recession, only about how deep it will be. Nigel Gault, Global Insight

--Turn out the lights the parties over. We are in a recession. Joseph Brusuelas, IDEAglobal

--A terrible report. No support at all now for consumer spending growth. Joshua Shapiro, MFR, Inc.