Bernanke: Unemployment a national crisis

Source

FEDERAL Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that long-term unemployment is a "national crisis" and suggested that Congress should take further action to combat it. He also said lawmakers should provide more help to the battered housing industry.

Mr Bernanke noted that about 45 per cent of the unemployed have been out of work for at least six months.

"This is unheard of," he said in a question-and-answer session after a speech in Cleveland.

"This has never happened in the post-war period in the United States. They are losing the skills they had, they are losing their connections, their attachment to the labor force."

He added: "The unemployment situation we have, the job situation, is really a national crisis."

A national crisis in US unemployment is now a statement issued by the Fed Chairman who is beginning to raise alarms over the trend. Bernanke is beginning to fire up at Congress and makes a rather telling admission:

Mr Bernanke's comments were his latest in a public effort to get Congress to act further to rejuvenate the economy. He suggested that the Fed can achieve only so much through policies that seek to lower long-term interest rates.

"The Federal Reserve has made enormous efforts to try to help this economy recover and stabilize" though its control of interest rates, or monetary policy, he said. Those policies have driven rates to record lows.

"Monetary policy can do a lot, but monetary policy is not a panacea," Mr Bernanke said.

So Mr Bernanke is conceding that monetary policy has not, and will not, deliver the economic boost needed to effectively address unemployment levels. HIgh unemployment appears set to remain no matter how many more billions of $$$ are spent and issued as debt.

And in other news, the whole world may be going into a 'global synchronous recession' which certainly won't help with GDP and employment in developed countries.

“A more sinister scenario could also unfold, namely a global synchronous recession where deflation becomes more visible,” said Morgan Stanley’s Adam Parker, the head of U.S. equity strategy, in a note to clients this week. “In recent days, a number of clients have told us they are having great difficulty in getting defensive, even when they want to.”

“Their worst case is not the worst case of the prior two recessions in 2001 and 2008,” said Stephen Weiss of Short Hills Capital. “This time it could very well be worse since the global economies have more interdependence.”

“The news flow for the balance of 2011 will continue to be dominated by geopolitical uncertainty on three continents led by the European sovereign debt crisis, ongoing budget negotiations in Washington, DC, risk of a U.S. recession, and slowing pace of economic activity in China,” said Goldman Sachs’ David Kostin, in a note last week.

Kostin’s highlighted the issue many investors are facing when problems occur on every continent: there’s no place to hide. With so many macro problems to deal with, investors have thrown fundamentals out the window.

The job of stopping this “global synchronous recession” falls (some would say ‘unfortunately’) on the hands of policy makers around the world.

Oh dear!

Germany’s parliament must agree with the French government and Greece’s parliament. China must orchestrate a ‘soft landing’ in their economy. And at home, Congress must cut the deficit while still fostering growth.

“The longer the sovereign crisis goes on without resolution or empty ‘we are having constructive talks’ type statements, the more the market believes that there are very large entities within the European financial sector that cannot take any type of Greek default or haircut,” said Alec Levine, a derivatives strategist with Newedge Group. “Time is not on the side of the policy makers.”

Policy makers haven't helped too much so far, in fact economic trends continue to deteriorate despite extraordinary efforts to boost growth. Time and competence being primary factors, both clearly lacking, but when you have a world falling into recession, there is probably not a whole lot that can be accomplished now, particularly where sovereign debt is escalating and deficits abound, the Eurozone crisis and so on.

This is just now dawning on him?
One thing that would help this national crisis is to put Bernanke in the unemployment line.

Originally posted by Afterthought
This is just now dawning on him?
One thing that would help this national crisis is to put Bernanke in the unemployment line.

along with everyone that is apart of congress... give them a month with no pay see how they like it...dirty crooks.

i think he is trying to cover his ###. wipe his hands and walk away before things get ugly. not that they arent now, but i mean rEEEEaally ugly.

The first thing that came to my mind was...

Ya THINK!?

What flippin idiots we have running the country. They will eventually rue the day.

Originally posted by Afterthought
This is just now dawning on him?
One thing that would help this national crisis is to put Bernanke in the unemployment line.

What you meant to say was the opposite side of a firing line...

reply to post by Americanist


Clever!
I usually don't like words being put in my mouth, but I'll make an exception this time.

Maybe Bernanke should have some of his banker buddies loan out some the cash they stole off the taxpayers instead of hoarding it.

This guy's got some balls admonishing congress. Who the hell do these people think they are telling the government what to do? You owe us money and your people don't have enough jobs to earn it.

Steal, lie, collude for the downfall of governments, fund wars and tell governments what to do. What a bunch of smug pricks.

Declare war on The Fed, tell them to stick their bill where the sun don't shine then lock them up and throw away the key.

And of course we now have Obama playing the blame game arguing that the US economy has been harmed by Europe's failure to deal with it's banking crisis effectively

reply to post by surrealist


It's funny actually (read stupid) that Bernake would say this, but he's a con man just like all those other ones in Washington (name your capital, they are all the same). Bernake's buddies on Wall Street and in the multinationals DELIBERATELY sent a large portion of jobs to third world countries to get a cheaper labor rate to boost their profits with no regard whatsoever for the citizens of the US. In addition, our stupid governments gave said multinationals tax breaks for screwing the employment market by shipping those jobs offshore, this happened in Canada as well. So, just like the politicians, this @ssclown Bernake says one thing and does another. Or maybe he is just totally incompetent, negligent and a liar? Who knows....

Cheers - Dave

Only the people who recieve unemployment checks are counted as unemployed. I recieved my last check over a year ago. So the stats they go by arn't even close to what the truth is.

I get some side work but it's so few and far between and most people are really tighten their grip on the money they have. I can't believe the things I'm seeing. Even tho I knew absolutly it was coming.

Great thread SnF

Originally posted by CigSmokinMan
i think he is trying to cover his ###. wipe his hands and walk away before things get ugly. not that they arent now, but i mean rEEEEaally ugly.

Was exactly what i was thinking.... try to save face now

reply to post by surrealist


oh, how I long for the time when it was just a small confined problem caused by those little sub-primers not paying their bills!!!



they've gone from blaming the subprimers all the way to blaming continents!!: lol:

wondering here, why should we believe anything they say???

Of course he thinks it's a national crisis.

Because if people aren't working...
How does he expect to have collateral on the money the Fed prints?

Everyone does realize this right?
The Federal Reserve note is backed by the guaranteed labor of the American people!
Not by gold, or silver....or even anything in Fort Knox.
It's backed by the people.
More specifically, your labor.
(i.e., taxes)

So the more workers are out there, the mores taxes are paid, the more value the "notes" have.
It's a gigantic circle that I don't think many people understand at this point.

This is why the MSM is telling citizens that their children are 47k in debt before their born.
Because you are nothing but a number that guarantees taxes will be paid in your life.
So our gov't can promise their debt will be paid back and the Fed can print more money.

It's truly pathetic how we are just a number.
How we are born into debt.




Abolish the Fed!!!!