President Obama sounded a note of optimism about the economy in his speech on financial regulation today, declaring that “the storms of the past two years are beginning to break.” It appears, however, that that may not be true for the poorest Americans. For them, in fact, the worst of the storms may be yet to come.

A report issued late last week by the Brookings Institution projects that the national poverty rate will continue to climb because of the recession, peaking at 14.4 percent in 2011 or 2012 — up from 12.5 percent in 2007 — as more people are thrown out of work. That means another 8 million people could be thrown into poverty, in addition to the 37 million people who were poor in 2007.

Don’t look to Brookings for any “light at the end of the tunnel” rhetoric. “This recession will cast a long shadow on those at the bottom of the ladder — a group that was not doing well before the recession arrived and which will be disproportionately affected long after it has ended,” the report stated.