With the ink still drying on the newly passed $700 billion economic bailout plan, many North Texas residents are left feeling little comfort.

And they have reason to be wary, because the nation is in a recession, said Dr. Bernard Weinstein, director of the University of North Texas Economic Development and Research Center.

“It will be a year of hard slog,” Weinstein said. “It will be a fairly deep and fairly lengthy recession. It will probably take 12 to 18 months to get things right.”

But North Texans will most likely not feel the same pressure as other parts of the country, Weinstein said.

“North Texas is probably the strongest region in the country, and we will ride out the recession fairly well,” Weinstein said.

Some small businesses are feeling the credit freeze, but home prices in the area didn’t skyrocket like in other parts of the country, he said.

And public projects in North Texas such as the Trinity River Corridor Project, the expansion of Parkland Memorial Hospital and Denton County Transportation Authority’s rail initiative are placing government money into the community, which offsets the slowdown in the private sector, Weinstein said.

“In North Texas, we have industries that are kind of recession proof with the Barnett Shale, a huge amount of defense spending and people still moving to the area from other parts of the country and other countries,” Weinstein said.

The bailout should help credit start flowing at a reasonable rate once the Treasury Department starts fulfilling the plan to help ease the credit crisis, he said. But for now, it’s a different story.

“No one is lending to anyone right now; the landscape changes by day and by hour,” Weinstein said. “It’s hard to predict what will happen down the road, but I hope there is a lot less volatility. When people are nervous, they don’t spend money, and it detracts from the economy.”

The slowed economy has temporarily put a crunch on some small businesses in the area.

People are also slower in paying off their accounts, said E.R. Tucker, owner of Tucker Communications, which operates an online Christian radio station based in Denton.

Truck sales have declined since gas prices have soared, said Russ Ellis, an executive manager at James Wood Autopark. But car sales have increased.

“We’re down a little bit from last year,” Ellis said. “You hear everyday how bad things are doing, but it’s really not that bad.”

The tight economy has led to job cuts. And nonfarm payroll employment declined last month by 159,000 jobs nationwide, according to a report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The national unemployment rate held at 6.1 percent with fewer jobs reported in the construction, manufacturing and retail trade, according to the report.

And although the North Texas economy remains strong, Rebecca Stone of Plano is still out of work.

She was laid off in May from her executive position at Brinker International Restaurants of Dallas, and four months later, she hasn’t found a new job. She said she has about 25 years of experience in the restaurant industry.

As she and her husband, Jim Stone, walked around downtown Denton on Saturday evening, they talked about the economic bailout.

“I felt like it was something that we needed to do,” Jim Stone said. “I’m not in favor of it, but it was the lesser of two evils. But I felt a little like we were bailing out Wall Street.”

The couple said they were uncertain that the bailout would solve the underlying problem of regulation enforcement.

“The regulation existed, but no one was enforcing it,” Rebecca Stone said. “There were no ethics and no morals in government. Anything goes.”

Stone said she feels the bailout became political rather than taking time to come up with a better solution.

“It’s a bunch of bull,” Rebecca Stone said. “There is too much fear mongering.”

Some economic officials have speculated that the bailout plan has little to do with the economy and more to do with winning votes during a presidential election year.

It feels bad to unemployed, she said, but the unknown feels worse. She used to think the country’s economic situation would straighten out after a new president takes office in January, but now she said she’s not that optimistic.

“I don’t see an end to the downward spiral,” she said. “We haven’t even gotten close to hitting bottom.”

Only consumers may hit bottom, Denton resident Kristin Nunn said.

“No one’s bailing me out and paying my credit card debt off,” Nunn said.

Nunn said she was against the bailout from the beginning and said the source of the problem goes back to the irresponsibility of the nation.

“It’s all jacked up,” Nunn said. “But it’s still the best country in the world, even though we made the stupidest decision.”

Staff writers Karina Ramirez and Lori Forgay contributed to this story .

CANDACE CARLISLE can be reached at 940-566-6889.