Some fear Fed's bold move to fuel the recovery won’t be bold enough.

NASCAR, it’s not.

It’s more of a clunker, puttering forward at a modest pace, but handling badly and in danger at every turn of sputtering, stalling and slipping off the track.

It is, in other words, the economy. It’s making progress, sure, but this is the slowest post-recession expansion we’ve seen — and, to many people, it still feels like recession.

But with President Barack Obama effectively blocked from adding any stimulus spending — the election ended any doubts about that — it has fallen to the Federal Reserve to add more fuel. Eight injections of $75 billion a month will soon commence, the Fed announced Wednesday.

Why, you ask, do these conservative, inflation-fearing bankers feel the need for more speed?

Perhaps because the economic engine is still partly idle. As the Fed swung onto the track last week, it found itself drafting behind some less than robust reports.

For one: New housing starts in September inched up 0.3 percent to 610,000, according to the Census Bureau. Many economists say a solid recovery cannot happen without the cooperation of housing. And while the starts number is 12 percent better than a year ago, it’s still not strong.

Another report, a survey of nonmanufacturing companies, was encouraging: the ISM index notched upward in October, indicating continued expansion. The survey’s employment component signaled hiring, but the pace was more granny lane than Talladega.

Confirming that unhappy conclusion was Thursday’s report on new jobless claims. About 457,000 Americans filed for unemployment insurance last week, according to the Department of Labor.

Moreover, the yellow flag on jobs is still out: Friday, the Labor Department reported modest growth of 151,000 positions in October while the unemployment rate remained at 9.6 percent.

Reports also say that staffing companies have seen their businesses pick up. That is traditionally a signal that hiring speed will pick up soon, since employers who see signs of a rebound often use temp workers rather than risk hiring at first.

Another hopeful signal: Factory orders increased 2.1 percent.

Unfortunately, some of the good economic news is bad for American working people: Productivity was up nicely in the third quarter, the government announced Thursday, which means companies, on average, are getting more output from each employee. But that means they don’t need to hire much, said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. economist for IHS Global Insight, in an e-mail report.

“In this environment, the rate of overall spending in the economy and top-line revenue growth needs to accelerate in order to precipitate more hiring,” he wrote.

So even if the positives are encouraging, the Fed doesn’t find them convincing.

And while some economists warn that the Fed stimulus is still not enough to refuel a $15 trillion-a-year economy, Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, defended the injections Thursday in an unusual op-ed piece in the Washington Post.

The column was partly political — an argument that the Fed was needed and that it would function far better if it were not subject to backseat driving from Congress.