It’s an election year, after all, so you won’t be surprised to discover that our President and Federal Reserve Chief, see no R word, hear no R word and only speak the R word to insist there is no R word:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy is in turmoil, yet President Bush and Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke say the country will weather the storm. Neither sees a recession on the horizon.
Both Bush and Bernanke are on the front lines of the government’s efforts to right an economy that increasing numbers of economists fear is on the verge of its first recession since 2001, if it hasn’t already fallen into one. […]
. . . Bush, at a White House news conference, and Bernanke, in congressional testimony, seemed to strike the same hopeful note that the economy should be able to survive the fallout.
“I don’t think we’re headed to a recession, but no question we’re in a slowdown,” Bush said.
The Federal Reserve is not forecasting a recession. It does predict slow growth for this year as well as higher unemployment.
“I realize that my testimony wasn’t the most cheerful thing you’ll hear today … but I do very much believe that the U.S. economy will return to a strong growth path with price stability,” Bernanke told the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
Merely a S-L-O-W-D-O-W-N. A return to strong growth is just around the corner. Right. And I’m John McCain’s first choice for a running mate, too.
Nonetheless, the Fed will go on lowering interest rates in the hopes that the whole ponzi scheme of cheap (and ever more worthless) money will somehow forestall the economic crash that is bound to come (and which by any objective assessment is already occurring in the manner of a semi-trailer falling off a cliff). Or at least keep “talk” of that ugly R word off the radar of our elite media punditocracy so Senator Straight Shooter still has an outside chance of retaining the Presidency for Corporate America’s wholly owned subsidiary, the GOP, come November.
Besides who wants to discuss the boring old economy when we have Louis Farrakhan to tie around Barack Obama’s neck like a half dead stinking albatross. Now that’s a legitimate (and far “sexier”) topic for the national media’s obsession attention!
