Several trillions of dollars into the largest government intervention ever engineered to rescue the globe's beacon of free enterprise, millions of Americans victimized by the recession are getting a little impatient.

They want to know why, in the face of massive government assistance -- estimated by Bloomberg last month at more than $7.7 trillion in payments, loans and promises -- another 1.3 million workers lost their jobs over the last three months. They want to know why banks aren't lending more. And they want to know why retail sales and other key measures of the economy's health are deteriorating instead of improving.

Economists offer a simple explanation that won't make the instant gratification crowd happy: Even unprecedented measures take time when you're battling a global recession compounded by the high anxiety gripping consumers, businesses, credit markets and Wall Street.

"That didn't happen overnight and it won't go away overnight," said PNC Financial Services Group chief economist Stuart Hoffman. "The economic news won't look good for the next six months."

Bank of New York Mellon Chief Economist Richard B. Hoey compared asking for a quick recovery to asking a heart attack victim when he is going to run his next marathon. Or as Argus Research chief economist Richard Yamarone put it: "Rome wasn't built in a day. You can't expect it to burn down in one day either."

One sign of progress consumers easily overlook: the stability restored to the financial system by rescuing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Citigroup and other overleveraged institutions.

"If you had not seen any of this, it clearly would have been a calamity," Mr. Yamarone said. "It would have been tenfold worse."

The failure of Lehman Bros. in mid-September compounded the problems confronting policymakers.

Although economists had not yet made the call, the U.S. economy had been in a recession since December. Reverberations from Lehman's failure shocked a weakening economy at the wrong time, Mr. Hoey said.

"The extreme high level of uncertainty hit just before holiday spending season and just before the 2009 business spending planning season," he said.

As the crisis deepened, consumers began conserving cash by reducing spending. Companies did the same, laying off workers and curtailing capital spending plans. Economists say the result could be the longest recession since World War II.

Mr. Hoey said recent Federal Reserve Board initiatives, including purchasing mortgage securities in order to lower mortgage rates are starting to take hold. "We need a lower mortgage rate to limit the magnitude of further housing decline," he said.

Another reason why there hasn't been the progress some expected is that the complexity of problems confounded regulators.

When Congress approved the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program in October, it thought Treasury officials would use the money to purchase bad mortgages and mortgage-related securities from banks, cleaning up their balance sheets and putting them in a better position to lend.

A month later, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. told Congress he was switching gears. Up to $250 billion of the funds would be invested directly in banks, which Mr. Paulson said would thaw frozen credit markets more quickly. When Congress failed to approve a bailout package for Detroit automakers, pressure grew on the Bush administration to use some of the TARP money on the Big 3.

"Policy uncertainty is a huge issue," said Carnegie Mellon University economics professor Chester Spatt, former chief economist for the Securities and Exchange Commission. "There was a lot of confusion and ambiguity about what was supposed to happen."

There are still conflicting reports about what is happening. While Mr. Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke insist lenders are tightening credit, a New York research firm looked at Fed data and found that many types of lending had increased during the crisis. Some lending is at record levels, said Celent CEO Octavio Marenzi, author of the report.

"It was weird. Everything we looked at was going up, not down," he said. "Skepticism has been suspended when looking at the pronouncements of Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson."

Mr. Marenzi said regulators may be missing the mark by addressing the problems of large financial institutions that "took very ill-advised bets on very bad loans."

"The travails and problems of the few are not the problems of the many," he said.

Many observers said the credit crisis has not affected small and medium-sized banks. But given their new appreciation of risk, there is a prevailing opinion that banks are being more cautious about lending.

"Banks are really in no position to go credit crazy," Dr. Spatt said at a Dec. 15 symposium sponsored by the United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh.

Neither are consumers, which is why Mr. Yamarone believes that the Fed's Dec. 16 decision to reduce rates to near zero won't have "any meaningful economic consequences."

"Aggressive Fed easing over the last 15 months has not helped keep the economy out of recession or increase the pace of spending on big-ticket, interest rate-sensitive items like homes and automobiles," he said.

Mr. Yamarone said what's needed is the massive fiscal stimulus package being crafted by President-elect Barack Obama and the leaders of the next Congress.

"You're going to see a stimulus package that borders on nothing less than staggering. That will help," he said.

But even that will take time: time for Congress to agree on the specifics; time to turn on the spigots; and time for the money to filter through the economy, stimulating spending and creating jobs. Consequently, many economists aren't expecting to see signs of recovery until next summer or later.

"Policy is powerful, but it works with a lag," Mr. Hoey said.

The Bank of New York Mellon economist expects that unemployment, currently at 6.7 percent, will peak at 8 percent to 8.5 percent. Mr. Hoffman of PNC expects the jobless rate to crest this summer at 8.5 percent. If he's right, that would add another 2.5 million to 3 million to the 10.3 million already unemployed.

Mr. Yamarone expects unemployment to rise to only 7.8 percent. Under his best case scenario -- based on quick approval and implementation of a massive stimulus plan, continued aggressive action by the Fed and plunging energy prices -- "you could see us register some sort of recovery in June or July," he said.

"It's not going to be anything to write home about," he cautioned.