It may have been a throw-away line, but Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s declaration of the end of the recession -- to be precise he said the recession “is very likely over” -- came with some asterisks.

“Even though from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over at this point, it is still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time as many people still find their job security and their employment status is not what they wish it was,” Bernanke said during his appearance at the Brookings Institution.

Some of the reason for the qualification -- or what Bernanke referred to as the “technical perspective” -- is that much of the statistical improvement flows from one-shot incentives, leaving open the question of what might happen when those incentives evaporate.

But what seems to be the overwhelming desire to find good news in every economic report means that the one-shot effects have been minimized.

The retail sales report, for example, was hailed for showing strong gains in the overall number -- all but overlooking the fact that the "Cash for Clunkers" program had an outsized impact on those numbers. Some analysts, reading the retail-sales report, asserted the consumer had returned to the game -- even though not all of the retail receipts came from consumer pockets; some of course came (or will come) from the government.

[Much of what consumers had left went to gas-station owners as gasoline prices surged. And while there were gains in sales at apparel and electronics stores in August, a lot of that was due to government as well -- state and local governments declaring sales tax holidays to encourage back-to-school shopping for clothes and computers. Probably the only spending increase which might have legitimately been seen as a consumer confidence vote was the increase in restaurant sales, often seen as a discretionary expense. One day after the retail report though, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported prices for “food away from home” rose 0.1% in August. In other words, restaurant sales went up for the same reason gasoline sales rose: prices went up. The retail sales report tracks sales “nominally,” that is, without any adjustment for inflation -- so that as prices go up, sales go up having nothing to do with consumer preferences or attitudes.]

“The consumer economy of yesteryear is over,” according to Dr. Mauro Guillen of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “Nearly 15 million Americans would like to work but cannot find gainful employment. And it's not just disposable incomes that are preventing consumers from doing their job. According to the Fed, consumer credit decreased at an annualized rate of 5.2% in the second quarter. Americans are also turning frugal. The savings rate increased from less than 2% before the crisis to 5% income. Under normal circumstances, this is a change for the better. But the economy cannot recover if aggregate demand does not.

The auto program also had an impact on reports on industrial production and capacity utilization. Those reports -- often overlooked -- have an added significance in the recession/business cycle determination, since industrial production is one of the factors used by the business-cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research in determining the start and end dates of a recession. It’s probably just a coincidence that Bernanke made his recession-is-probably-over declaration just one day before the industrial-production data were released by his Federal Reserve.

The other major one-shot affecting the economic cycle has been the first-time home-buyers tax credit. Although it expires at the end of November, the impact on home sales will end sooner. The home purchase must be completed by Nov. 30, so allowing time for mortgage approval, sales contracts have to be entered into by the end of this month.

That the tax credit would provide a temporary, short-term boost for sales of new homes was apparent in the Housing Market Index survey of the National Association of Home Builders which includes questions rating current sales, buyer traffic and future sales. The current sales and buyer traffic indices rose in September; the future sales gauge dropped suggesting home builders realize -- at least at the moment -- their future may be behind them. 

There may be no better test of Bernanke’s optimism than the upcoming two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee at which the FOMC is not expected to make any changes in interest rates, but perhaps takes further steps toward unwinding its unprecedented intervention in the economy. The intervention has taken several shapes, including but not limited to have the Fed buy U.S. Treasury securities and action which will adding to the money supply can also be seen as an endorsement of budget deficits by “monetizing” the debt run up by the Administration and the Congress.

Mark Lieberman is the senior economist for the FOX Business Network. Prior to joining FOX, he served as first vice president and manager of economic analysis and research at Washington Mutual in New York. Before that, he served as senior vice president at Dime Savings Bank of New York (which was later acquired by Washington Mutual), where he specialized in credit and risk management. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the New York Association for Business Economics. He has a degree in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.