Larry Summers said yesterday not to expect any economic growth or a pickup in employment this year. Tim Geithner has been saying that there’s a lot of work left to do to fix the banking system.

Do these sound like any statements by policymakers that you’ve ever heard? Usually, these people, and the politicians they work for, are full of chatter about how everything is really good now, and it’s going to start getting better soon.

I can think of a couple of possible explanations. Maybe this Administration has simply been instructed to cool it on the happy talk. The people can plainly see the economy is very weak and not improving. You lose credibility fast when you blow smoke up people’s backsides. They may be playing a game of managing expectations.

What’s weak about this theory is that economic behavior in the US depends heavily on consumer sentiment. In fact, with consumer spending at 70% of the economy (pre-crisis; I’ve heard that it could be as many as 5 points below that by now), sentiment could be the most important factor in the economy. Why would the politicians want to talk it down?

The other possibility is that they’re looking in the tea leaves and seeing some real trouble ahead. Maybe when Summers says that things might start getting better next year, that is the happy talk.