The Federal Reserve and Timothy Geithner have said, on a number of occasions, that the economy is starting to show signs of a recovery.

Remember the “Green Shoots” Bernanke observed?  Remember how everyone was curious as to why THEY were not seeing said green shoots? I’m guessing you do, and I am guessing you are still not seeing them.

Well, over the weekend the White House appears to have ripped the green shoots of a recovery and tossed them aside – there will be no recovery for those in the job market until 2010.

Speaking on C-SPAN, Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said that she expected theG.D.P. to begin growing in the fourth quarter of this year. Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, made a similar prediction last week.

But Ms. Romer also said that she expected unemployment to rise even after the economy turns, saying that the G.D.P. has to grow at a rate of about 2.5 percent before unemployment will fall. Before that happens, she said, it is “unfortunately pretty realistic” that the unemployment rate could reach 9.5 percent. A reasonable estimate for the G.D.P.’s growth rate in 2010, she said, is three percent.

9.5% on the unemployment in 2009?  To me that seems less than realistic.  

I’ve said a number of times that I expect to hit 10% by the end of this year. If the nation sees a loss of another 1.1M people by 12/31, the U.S. Unemployment rate will end up at roughly 10.2% 

Here is the big question, though: Will the government switch people from “unemployed” to “underemployed” (those who have given up hope and are no longer looking) in order to keep the reported unemployment rate under 10%? My guess is yes.

If one looks past the discussion of economic news and listens to the other information, Ms. Romer is giving the public a look at the next major target the administration has in mind: Health care

“When you actually look at that budget going out in time, the thing that is going to bankrupt us is government expenditures on health care,” she said. 

Insurers of all kinds, take note and start to duck and cover.  The heat will be rising for you very shortly.