I happily voted for Barack Obama last year. I was thrilled to see George Bush and his cronies swept away.

But I had no illusions: I knew that fixing the country's problems, especially its struggling economy, would require a long, hard slog. I knew, too, that things weren't magically going to get better because we had a new presidential administration.

Unfortunately, I was right. The national unemployment rate is stuck at 9.5 percent, and is likely to climb higher before it falls. At the same time, housing foreclosures are still at record levels. And housing prices, though they've inched upwards during the last three months, are still far below where they stood just one year earlier.

So the question is: Do you have any faith in Obama's economic stimulus plans? According to a story by the New York Times, a growing number of citizens no longer do.

According to the story, critics are lining up to point out that Obama's $787 billion stimulus plans were either too timid or too wrong-headed. Some critics aren't content with that; they say that Obama's plans are both too meek and too nonsensical.

The unfortunate truth is that recessions like this one are solved by one thing: time.

We are an impatient society. I've been writing some stories lately regarding weight loss. It's amazing how many U.S. citizens are still looking for that magic pill, powder or drink that will miraculously shrink their waists, with them doing no work at all, of course. People don't like the truth that losing weight requires healthy eating and exercise over a long period of time.

We want instant results, even with it comes to our economy.

Nothing's going to improve until unemployment falls. That's what's holding everything back. But unemployment is so high now, it's going to take a long, long time for it to get back to the kind of levels with which we are comfortable.

If you're holding onto your home and hoping to see it suddenly start increasing in value, you're going to have to wait a long time. There is no quick fix, unfortunately, for any of our nation's various economic crises.