What Is This World Coming To?

According to Breitbart.com,  the worst recession in 80 years,  perhaps the worst economic downturn in human history, and certainly the worst recession ever, (depending on who you ask) is almost over — already.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Tuesday that the economy should pull out of a recession and start growing again later this year. But in testimony to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, Bernanke warned that even after a recovery gets under way, economic activity is likely to be subpar. That means businesses will stay cautious about hiring, driving up the nation’s unemployment rate and causing “further sizable job losses” in the coming months, he said. Read the rest of this entry »

President Barack Hussein Obama, pressuring lawmakers to urgently approve a massive economic recovery bill, turned his first prime-time news conference Monday night into a high pressure sales pitch.

Wagging a finger at his critics, he said the recession left America so weak that  “only the federal government” can “jolt our economy back to life.”  Then he turned on the pressure, saying that failure to impose his plan “could turn a crisis into a catastrophe.”

The unemployment level during the Depression was 33%.  The unemployment level during the OPEC recession of the 1979’s topped 10.8%.   The unemployment level today is 7.3%

Evidently, America is suffering from a crisis of economic confidence.   They don’t think that things are going to turn around any time soon and therefore they aren’t investing any money.  (I wonder what makes them feel that way?)

Anyway, to boost confidence, President Obama went on national TV to tell the country that his “plan is not perfect”  but without it, we’re totally doomed.

“No plan is.  I can’t tell you for sure that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope, but I can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act will only deepen this crisis as well as the pain felt by millions of Americans.

Howzat again?   “This plan isn’t perfect, and I don’t know if it will work.  But ignore the plan’s critics. Let’s do it anyway.  Look into my eyes. . . . ”

“So my bottom line when it comes to the recovery package is: send me a bill that creates or saves 4 million jobs.”

(At a cost of a quarter-million or so per job. Great plan)

“At this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life. The plan that ultimately emerges from Congress must be big enough and bold enough to meet the size of the economic challenge we face right now.”

How about throwing more money at it than exists on the face of the earth in the largest national spending spree in the history of mankind?  That big?  That bold?

Hmmm… a little article from January worth reading. It explains in very simple terms how this “recession” might not even be real.

Is America headed inevitably toward recession? Maybe; probably; who knows? If anyone could accurately predict the economy, they’d be billionaires in no time.

One thing is certain, though: Simply hearing about the possibility of a recession can bring it about. This is due to a combination of two distinctly non-economic factors: psychology and the news media. This is nothing new; sometimes in the process of reporting about a problem, the media actually makes that problem worse.