"Technically" We're Out of a Recession

By Alan Caruba

I cannot tell you how relieved I was to hear Ben Bernake, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, announce that the United States is “technically” out of the recession. I spent much of the day waiting for my phone to ring with offers of work.

Chairman Bernake did add that jobs would lag, but all the experts say that jobs always lag and, if that’s the case, I am thinking this time around jobs are not only going to lag, they are going to disappear, run away, and leave much of the work force unable to live the “American dream.”

There was a time when the American dream included the opportunity for everyone to own their own home. That dream was based on having a steady job and a decent wage. It was dependent on people saving some of their income for a down payment. It was not dependent on federal government programs that put pressure on banks and mortgage lenders to make loans to people that ACORN had dragged in off the street.

I would feel a lot better about Bernake’s announcement if Congress wasn’t right now getting ready to pass a piece of legislation that every single poll says the MAJORITY of Americans do not like and do not want.

I speak of course of Obamacare. The same polls also suggest that the more Obama shows up on television giving speeches, being interviewed, and otherwise sucking all the air out of the room, the more a MAJORITY of Americans distrust and dislike him.

Obama will do all five Sunday news-talk shows on Sunday. He is booked as a guest on the David Letterman Show. I am pretty sure he is planning to be on “Dancing with the Stars” ever since he heard that former Speaker Tom Delay is going to take a turn around the floor.

I would feel better if the Cap-and-Trade tax on all energy use in America wasn’t simmering in some witch’s cauldron somewhere in the bowels of the Senate. Even by White House estimates, Cap-and-Trade would cost families nearly $1,800 a year.

That’s just what we all need, a tax on energy that will drive more manufacturing out of the nation to places that do not punish businesses with OSHA, environmental regulations, minimum wage, and a panoply of other demands before they can even think of making a profit.

I’d feel more secure about the end of the recession if the federal government would divest itself of its ownership of General Motors and Chrysler, along with AIG, the insurance company that was too big to be allowed to fail. I was raised to believe that the government wasn’t supposed to own “private” businesses.

I’d feel better if the government would actually DO SOMETHING about the thousands of illegal aliens that continue to flood into the nation across our southern border. I would feel better if I knew for sure Congress wasn’t going to foist an amnesty on the ten to twelve million illegals currently availing themselves and their families of our welfare, educational, and healthcare systems.

I’d feel better if the United States would make it quite clear to Iran that it will take whatever steps necessary to ensure those lunatics do not possess the ability to make atomic bombs and nuclear-tipped missiles.

And I would feel better when, after nearly TWO MILLION AMERICANS show up in the streets of Washington, D.C. to peaceably protest Obamacare and all the other insane borrowing and spending programs of the current administration, its spokesmen could have the decency to acknowledge them!

David Axelrod, the President’s advisor, dismissed the 9/12’rs saying, “They’re wrong.”

We are not wrong. We are angry. And now we have been treated to having the worst president of the modern era, Jimmy Carter, tell us that the only reason we are angry is because Barack Hussein Obama is black. To borrow a word from Bernake, Obama is “technically” half white, a mulatto.

So, hooray! The recession is over. Why isn’t my phone ringing?