Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"The recession really clobbered household wealth. In fact, household assets were down $16 trillion -- trillion -- at the height of the recession. Now the good news is that the numbers that we just got from the Federal Reserve for the first quarter of this year show that we have recovered -- we being households -- 6 trillion of that loss. So we are still down, but we are now down only $10 trillion only, rather than $16 trillion.

"At the same time households are continuing to pay down on their debt. In fact, households collectively have paid down almost half a trillion dollars of debt since the recession began, so household financial balance sheets are improving.

"There is a downside to this, though. ... That is, as households are paying down on debt and they are actually saving more money, their spending is not going to grow as fast. And we think that is the main reason why moving forward this economic recovery will be rather slow."