Friday, January 07, 2011

Bernanke: Four to Five Mores Years to Reach Normal Employment

Well, look at the upside. It'll be a Republican administration doing it. Some come 2015 or 2016, whoever is president will have some halfway decent numbers to run for re-election on.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sketched a more optimistic view of the economy, but said the Fed's $600 billion bond-buying program is needed because unemployment is likely to stay elevated for up to five more years.

Bernanke told the Senate Budget Committee that there's increasing evidence that a "self-sustaining" recovery is taking hold. He said he expects stronger economic growth because consumers and businesses will boost spending this year.

Bernanke spoke one hour after the government released a disappointing employment report. Employers added only 103,000 jobs in December. The unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent partly because people gave up looking for jobs. Many economists had forecast much bigger job gains and were looking for a signal that businesses were ready to step up hiring.
Only 103,000 jobs, huh? Funny, but the clown VP said back in April we'd already be at 500,000 a month by now.
Vice President Biden predicted Friday at a Pennsylvania fundraiser that the U.S. economy would be adding up to 500,000 jobs each month "some time in the next couple of months."

"All in all we're going to be creating somewhere between 100[,000] and 200,000 jobs next month, I predict," Biden said, according to a pool report, adding that he "got in trouble" for a job growth prediction last month. "Even some in the White House said, 'Hey, don't get ahead of yourself.' Well, I'm here to tell you, some time in the next couple of months, we're going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month."

"We caught a lot of bad breaks on the way down," Biden added. "We're going to catch a few good breaks because of good planning on the way up."
How's that working out, Joe?

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