The U.S. economy could recover by late 2009, but it won't look like its earlier golden self, says former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.

“There will always be a market for investors and money managers, but it will be a while before we see the times we've seen," Summers told the Boston Herald.

“In recent years, financial services represented 40 percent of corporate profits in the U.S., but those days are over for now.”

The nation’s leaders must craft an economic plan that aims for all Americans to achieve prosperity; reforms the American healthcare system; and reduces our reliance on foreign oil, Summers says.

Government figures show that the standard of living for working and middle-class Americans have deteriorated due to rising prices coupled with rising consumer debt levels.

From 1999 through mid-2008, the price of milk has risen 35 percent, ground beef 54 percent, eggs 128 percent, and gasoline 244 percent, government data show.

Yet middle-income Americans saw their yearly household incomes fall by $408 during that period when adjusted for inflation, the Census Bureau reports.

University of California political scientist Jacob Hacker sees a broad decline in the economic security of most Americans, not just investors.

“The unemployment rate or the inflation rate doesn’t capture the degree to which people are at risk of losing their home, or seeing their finances crumbling, or the risk of high health costs without insurance, or of retiring without adequate income,” Hacker says.