Recession? What Recession? "An aide handed Chairman Bernanke his dancing shoes..."

NYT: Recession? What Recession?
By BOB HERBERT
Published: November 10, 2007

If it looks like a recession and feels like a recession ...

“Quite frankly,” said Senator Charles Schumer, peering over his glasses at the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, “I think we are at a moment of economic crisis, stemming from four key areas: falling housing prices, lack of confidence in creditworthiness, the weak dollar and high oil prices.” He asked Mr. Bernanke, at a Congressional hearing Thursday, if we were headed toward a recession.

An aide handed the chairman his dancing shoes, and Mr. Bernanke executed a flawless version of the Washington waffle. He said: “Our forecast is for moderate, but positive, growth going forward.” He said: “Economists are extremely bad at predicting turning points, and we don’t pretend to be any better.” He said: “We have not calculated the probability of recession, and I wouldn’t want to offer that today.”

With all due respect to the chairman, he would see the recession that so many others are feeling if he would only open his eyes. While Mr. Bernanke and others are waiting for the official diagnosis (a decline in the gross domestic product for two successive quarters), the disease is spreading and has been spreading for some time....

The housing meltdown is getting the attention, but there’s so much more. Bankruptcies and homelessness are on the rise. The job market has been weak for years. The auto industry is in trouble. The cost of food, gasoline and home heating oil are soaring at a time when millions of Americans are managing to make it from one month to another solely by the grace of their credit cards.

The country has been in denial for years about the economic reality facing American families. That grim reality has been masked by the flimflammery of official statistics (job growth good, inflation low) and the muscular magic of the American way of debt: mortgages on top of mortgages, pyramiding student loans and an opiatelike addiction to credit cards at rates that used to get people locked up for loan-sharking. The big story out of Mr. Bernanke’s appearance before the Joint Economic Committee was his prediction that the economy was likely to worsen. Only the people still trapped in denial could have believed otherwise....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/opinion/10herbert.html?em&ex=1194843600&en=0829517035e69c54&ei=5087%0A

...now beginning with passing HR 333 to impeach Dick Cheney to prevent any attack on Iran, reign in presidential power by repealing the Patriot Act, stop funding the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars and bring our troops home safely, pass the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act of 2007 to prevent the hedge funds from causing a total meltdown of the economy, establish a new Breton Woods System of fixed currency exchange rates among the trading partners and begin investing in the U.S. and creating real long term jobs for all Americans.

...goes into full force they will be the ones pushing apple carts and standing in line at soup kitchens and bread lines, if they have not blown their own brains out by then.

:shrug:

Why?

Apt, isn't it?

...the only reason we don't see that is the fact that the reports are controlled by the same people causing the collapse of the currency and the meltdown of the economy. When the reports finally come out, it will have already happened and it will be too late to turn it around for 97% of Americans, lost homes, lost investments, lost savings, lost jobs...all will be but a memory.