In this video, Mercatus Scholar and NYU Professor of Economics Lawrence J. White discusses last week's speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. In response to a question about how the recovery is moving along, White said: 

It's been an open secret: the economy is not as robust as one would like. Unemployment has gone back up and the jobs story says that this is not a robust recovery. At the same time, we have gridlock in Washington, DC so it's hard for anything to happen to get us out of this difficult situation.