Wednesday, September 16, 2009

"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?

5 comments:

Sailingbum said...

Alan,

The only "correction" I would make is that obie has already surpassed s**t for brains jimbo carter as the "worst president of the modern era"!

Rich Kozlovich said...

There was an old saying right after the Great Depression. "It wasn't so bad if you had a job." Currently unemployment is 9 plus percent. What happen when that 9 percent runs out of unemployment money?

During the Great Depression we didn't owe 65 Trillion dollars. We didn't have a mortgage crisis with a ton of bad dept being held by the banks. We didn't have a huge bureaucracy throughout the federal, state and local level and we didn’t have so many people on some kind of government dole with COLA protocols that increase the payouts every year to the point where the programs for the aged will consume 105% of the federal budget by 2020.

And we have pundits, government leaders and business people telling us that it is all OK now and by next year we will be climbing back out of this financial problem. They make me think of that idiot cartoon kid Alfred E. Neuman in the MAD magazine who had the motto “What Me Worry?”

Charlotte said...

Alan, my phone isn't ringing either and when that hammer drops and the ax chops down our cherry tree, then this admin is going to have to deal with more than just a couple of million folks showing up in DC for a weekend jaunt down PA Avenue.

I read last week (on CNN of all places) where most of the stock movement that we've all been seeing in the markets these last few months were just trades from movers and shakers in big corporations selling off stock and trying to make a profit while they still can. You won't hear that talked about much.

Granted I really don't know much about all this money stuff (didn't do at that well in my College Economics classes, which at the time was yawn and more years than I care to count much less remember) But now I wish I had paid more attention.

Bottom line is this country is in a heap of trouble and now is not the time for Ivy League graduates to play politics with our economy.

Carolyn said...

People who saved and did things the responsible way are not getting any phone calls either. Unemployment numbers, I don't think, show all those who's benefits have aleady run out, or those not bothered to apply. Yeah, I guess I'm racist because I believe this is the worst administration since carter. Oh, how I wish that man would go away. God bless you Mr. Carua

joe blowe said...

www.usdebtclock.org
Have a look at the 'derivatives'.
You are not seeing things, count the zeros, it is 645 Trillion Dollars.
How are we going to deflate this balloon ?