Obama's Speech on Economic Success Will Ignore Failures

The White House plans to release a report Monday showing that the economy has only half recovered from the 2008 Wall Street debacle, although it will likely be used by President Barack Obama to highlight some economic successes, according to the Daily Caller.

The 50-page report obtained by the Daily Caller says that less than half of Americans' per-capita wealth lost in the government-boosted property bubble has been recovered.

"Adjusted for inflation and population growth, only 45 percent of wealth lost during the recession has been recovered, and many of the hardest hit households did not benefit as much from the rebound in (Wall Street) financial assets prices," the report says.

The report titled "The Financial Crisis: Five Years Later," fails to mention current unemployment rates, underemployment among Americans, or salaries and wages that have dropped significantly since 2009, partly due to the fallout from the Lehman Brothers investment firm bankruptcy.

Obama plans to use the report at an event Monday to the five-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse, which caused an economic ripple that sent unemployment rates soaring, led to the collapse of a shaky mortgage system, and created the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

When Obama marks the occasion during a Rose Garden speech, he is expected to tout the creation of more than seven million new jobs. But the Daily Caller says the report also fails to mention the increase in food stamp distribution from 28 million in 2008 to nearly 48 million this year.

The New York Times, citing the White House report as well, also noted Monday that while the corporate economy has rebounded strongly, the middle class continues to feel the squeeze of high unemployment and sluggish wage growth.

However, the report, the Times noted, continues to take an optimistic view of the economy by stating that the "rubble from the financial crisis" has been cleared away and the country has "begun to lay a new foundation for stronger, more durable economic growth."

According to the Times, National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling warned in a conference call with reporters that resistance from Congress to raising the debt limit next month would further damage the economy.

The Times noted that Sperling blamed last year's difficult debt ceiling negotiations with Republicans for crippling the economy. Sperling reportedly said that some business leaders ranked them "with Pearl Harbor or 9/11 in terms of their hit to consumer confidence."