Shocking the economy

FOR THREE years, under presidents of both parties, the federal government has pumped trillions of borrowed dollars into stimulus, bailout, and recovery spending. The results have been woeful: Two years after the recession formally ended, the country is mired in a bleak economic lassitude from which it seems unable to rouse itself. Now the wretched news of recent weeks — feeble GDP growth, painful foreclosure rates, slipping car sales, a drop in factory orders, ever more Americans on food stamps — has grown even worse.

First, Standard & Poor’s reported that home prices have fallen to their lowest level in more than two years, confirming a “double dip’’ in a housing collapse more severe than the one during the Great Depression. Then came the government’s latest employment numbers: only 54,000 jobs added in May, the fewest in eight months, and a rise in the unemployment rate to 9.1 percent. This has been the lousiest recovery in more than 60 years, and by a wide margin.