Recession Is Ending! Who Are You Trying To Kid?

WINSBURG, Ohio – The clerk at the candy shop does not want to cry. She is determinedly cheerful, a professional smiler, dressed head to toe in bright turquoise.
But standing next to a display of plastic-wrapped candles and teddy bears, her face crumples at the most basic of questions: Are you doing OK?
"I'm sorry," she says, wiping her eyes with a shirt sleeve, her voice a shaky whisper. "Because at the end of the month, there's nothing left. I don't know what to say. It's almost getting to the point where I don't know what we're going to do anymore."
For four years now, Julie Bittner has rung up customers in this little store on the charming grassy square at the heart of Twinsburg, Ohio. And from her view by the front window, she has watched the fortunes of a ransacked autoworkers' mecca slowly drain away. Streets once teeming with people are now deserted. Some days, she says, not a soul comes through the door.
She's seen the headlines. The recession is ending! Unemployment is stabilizing! From Wall Street to Washington, the message comes: America, the worst is over. Let the spending begin. But in places like Twinsburg — where for so many the misery goes on, unabated — people aren't buying the rhetoric. If brighter days are ahead, they say, they're still awaiting the dawn.
According to an Associated Press-GfK poll conducted in early April, many Americans' impressions of the economy — and their own financial straits — haven't budged in a long time.
"Who are they trying to kid?" Bittner says. "Are they trying to make you think it's better so you'll go out and spend?"
Well, yes. The nation's fragile consumer confidence, which sank to a record low about a year ago, could keep the fledgling economic recovery stuck in first gear, says Ken Goldstein, an economist at the Conference Board, a research group that keeps close tabs on consumers.
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