Ben Bernanke, the nation's highest ranking non-elected official, was interviewed by Sam Donaldson for ABC. He said the U.S. recovery probably won't quickly bring down the unemployment rate, which is likely to stay "high for a while." Oh, where should I start?
There is no recovery, only an illusion of recovery. You can shock the heart and pump the chest full of shots of adrenaline but it doesn't mean that the victim is going to get up off the table and walk away any time soon. It only means that the body is being manipulated. Free money and government purchases of bad assets do not a recovery make.
Bernanke said, "The unemployment rate is still going to be high for a while, and that means that a lot of people are going to be under financial stress." The only one high for awhile is Bernanke; this is nothing more than Orwellian nonspeak for, "Beats the hell out of me!" See, you're not hungry or unable to properly take care of your children or to find a job. You're just under financial stress much in the same way the Titanic victims were under water stress.
Just think how much better the world will be when we are all allowed to lie with grace and style. "Now, now, Cynthia, I'm not breaking up with you. We'll still be together; you just won't see or hear from me anymore."
"Given the depth of the recession, the recovery is moderate paced."
And they ran Nixon out of town. Today he would be forced to sit at the children's table, unfit to sit at the big table with the grown-up top quality liars. So let's take Bernanke's statement and translate it into Simpsonese.
The Homer translation: "Economy bad, we're doing good!"
Depth of the recession? How deep is deep? How deep is the ocean?
"The recovery is moderate paced." Moderate paced like Mike Dukakis? Moderate paced like a Ford Escort?
"Your horse just finished last in the Kentucky Derby. How do you explain that?"
Moderate paced.
"Fed Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said today that monetary policy is, appropriately, very accommodative and that consumer spending will grow and inflation will be stable."
The Homer translation: Give away free money to the banks because they're friends of Mr. Burns and everything will be great because they don't want to put the banks under financial stress because Mr. Burns wouldn't like it.
"The jobless rate, which fell to 9.7 percent last month from 9.9 percent, was 4.6 percent at the start of the financial crisis in August 2007," said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics in New York.
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