Ping-Pong

Greetings good citizen,

There’s an old saying that goes “Opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one.” I’m sure you have yours just as I have mine.

Unfortunately, we seem unable to escape the topic of economic recovery, I’m as sick of denying it as the pundits must be of declaring it, so much for a ‘difference of opinion’.

Let’s have a look at what ‘BenBer’ has to say…

Fed Chief Says Recession Is ‘Very Likely Over’

By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: September 15, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke said Tuesday that it was “very likely” that the recession had ended although he cautioned that it would be many months before unemployment rates would drop significantly. [Honestly good citizen, we could be talking a hundred or more ‘months’, we’ve already lost one decade and it would be extremely easy to lose another one…worse, it wouldn’t be any skin off anyone in this administration’s nose. The Democrats, like the Republicans are both dead and buried.]

“From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over at this point,” he said, adding that “it’s still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time, as many people will still find that their job security and their employment status is not what they wish it was.” [‘Scuse me, but does anyone even remember a time when the constant threat of lay-off DIDN’T loom large on their personal radar? People who entered the workforce after 1980 DO NOT remember a time when their job wasn’t in jeopardy.]

The wildly cautiously optimistic assessment came at the conclusion of a speech by Mr. Bernanke at the Brookings Institution marking the anniversary of the market crisis that was precipitated by the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers. [The ‘collapse’ of Lehman Brothers didn’t ‘cause’ or ‘trigger’ anything that wasn’t already there! As much as they’d like you to believe otherwise…]

Mr. Bernanke said the consensus of forecasters was for moderate growth for the rest of this year and next, particularly as credit markets thaw, consumer confidence takes time to heal, and the federal government begins to unwind a series of federal spending and lending programs intended to mend the economy. [What sweet irony, they can’t unwind those ‘special programs’ without pulling the plug on the recovery. We’re stuck with them until they go bankrupt (which literally means they bankrupt us.)]

Business cycles are officially dated by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research. The committee often spends many months sifting through economic trends before declaring the beginning and end dates of a recession. [Um, this ‘downturn’ had nothing to do with the ‘business cycle’, the financial markets crashed because the consumer ‘hit the wall’. Well guess what, absolutely NOTHING has been done to help the consumer, so there’s no way in hell ‘commerce is going to start ‘expanding’ again…which isn’t necessarily a ‘bad thing’.]

For policymakers in Washington the more significant question than the actual date of the end of the recession will be when to begin unwinding the myriad of lending programs that were hastily created in response to the crisis? Officials at the Federal Reserve have already begun to think about that question. Mr. Bernanke and other top officials, including the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, have warned that winding down the programs too early could lead to another round of problems. Historians now generally agree that, during the Great Depression, the early withdrawal of government programs in the 1930s led to deeper economic problems throughout that decade. [Speaking of historians, Uncle Milty (Friedman) ‘explained’ how the ‘Great Depression’ (part I) was caused by the Federal Reserve not pumping massive amounts of money into the economy, so his ‘disciple’ BenBer, has pumped trillions of dollars into the economy and, surprise, surprise, we are still in trouble…because the money never got to where it could do the economy some good, they gave the money to people that already had too much…and they’re still ‘sitting’ on it while the real economy gets sucked down the tubes. Oh fucking well.]

On the other hand, waiting too long could fuel significant price increases and lead to a return of corrosive levels of inflation.

During his speech, Mr. Bernanke repeated his broad defense of the extraordinary rescue efforts by the central bank, the United States government and other foreign powers over the last year. [He’d look like an idiot (or a thief) if he didn’t.]

“Without these speedy and forceful actions we would have a lot more money to address ‘real problems’ with the economy , last October’s panic would likely have continued to intensify, or major financial firms would have failed, and the entire global financial system would have been at serious risk,” Mr. Bernanke said. “We cannot know for sure what the economic effects of these events would have been, but what we know about the effects of financial crises suggests that the resulting global downturn could have been extraordinarily deep and protracted.”

It’s crap like this that make you wonder what the hell Obama was thinking when he decided to re-appoint this fool. If you want to boil this thing down, the entire crisis is the result of regulatory capture where the law was either re-written or ignored to protect the guilty.

And the man who ran on the platform of change is making sure that nothing does, at least until the crooks can make a clean getaway…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner