Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday that the recession has ended, at least based on the numbers

He said "From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over at this point." Bernanke added there is a risk that labor markets will remain weak through 2010 because growth will be too anemic to create jobs. He also acknowledged that economic forecasting "is not one of your most precise sciences" in the same breath and that "ongoing headwinds," will keep growth at a moderate rate due to the financial and credit problems. Bernanke also stated that "unemployment will be slow to come down," he said. "It will come down, but it may take some time." A former top Fed staffer, Vince Reinhart, who is now at the American Enterprise Institute, said the technical end of the recession is more about arithmetic than anything else. Well Vince it was nice to hear someone admit all this really means nothing for the folks who are struggling to pay their rent, mortgage or electric bills. It pisses me off when our government tells us things it knows to be blatantly BS. When our President enthusiastically declared in a recent national TV address that "the bleeding has stopped” it makes me wonder what the hell kind of Band Aids does he buy because Mr. Oatmeal’s household budget is still hemorrhaging and cash flow is problematic at best.

Our president is not the only one riding the economic stability hay wagon, the rosy claims are coming from many quarters. There are still some significant economic facts of life and numerous skeptics suggest such cheerful tidings should be taken with a grain of salt, do you feel the sunshine being blown up your butt yet? I know that President Obama is a big Abe Lincoln fan so I dug into that a bit looking for honest Abe quotes and found one I think fits the rosy rumors being spread. Tis better to be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." It is not just at the federal level the optimism seems to be trickling down from, hum where have I heard that term before? Sorry. Anyway, the folks I know are still struggling, maybe I do not know the right class of people. Some of the indicators would be the unemployment rate, still over 15 million Americans are out of work and that number is expected to continue to rise through the first half of 2010, or another year. The stories that the housing market has hit bottom are also suspect, my humble observations tell me that VERY FEW if any homes have sold in my neighborhood. They say there is an unsold inventory of about 4 million homes and that is expected by some to climb to at least 11 million, and even the optimistic projections show it continuing to climb. The Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the former skipper of the World Bank and a professor at Columbia University recently reiterated his view that "we'll be lucky to get out of the recession by 2012." As the good professor sees it, you need GDP growth of 3% to create new jobs and that could be two to three years away.

I am a technical guy, used to assimilating and synthesizing large amounts of data from many points and after digestion developing action plans to put into motion the tactical effort required to meet strategic goals. The overly aggressive goals (pick any plan the government is working on) coupled with the size of what is going on it becomes clear, quickly, that the before the problem can be looked at we have to stop and realize that the methodology being used to move the plans forward is flawed. Without a sound methodology for repairing a problem, it is evident to most that the result may vary from the intended outcome. First, there are too many data points and secondly the decision makers are WAY TOO far away from those data points. What in the hell does that mean you are probably asking, well let me try to explain. When assessing a problem there are logical troubleshooting steps that follow a methodology, regardless of whether you are fixing a jalopy, a television or the national economy. It starts with data gathering, I will call them data points. Each data point is a piece of the puzzle, for example, is there gas in the jalopy, is the TV plugged in or is the unemployment rate over 10%. Now obviously on a project as big as 780 billion dollars there are millions, literally millions of data points that could be examined. Simple physics dictate that not all can be thoroughly examined, no big deal we can prioritize and gather as much data as we can about each. No issues yet with the methodology, is the gas gauge broken, are the remote batteries dead or are those last quarter’s housing start numbers.

In this plan, again pick one, we have ordinary folks gathering the raw data and they are reporting their conclusions to their boss. So one tier up, managers we will call them, are gathering the various data and synthesizing it into a report that will passed along to their boss. Their boss in turn is taking that analysis, along with analysis from many others and synthesizing for his boss. Keep in mind he is already htree times removed from the actual data, and God only knows how many steps in the chain there are on an issues like health care or pulling out of Iraq. I mean look at how complicated trying to shut down Guantanamo Bay Cuba was if you need a recent example. So that is how it should and most likely does work, the problems come from simple statistics. Say there are 10,000 people gathering data and say you have 100 managers performing the first iteration of synthesis and then another 25 performing the second iteration of synthesis and maybe another 3 for the third tier. Simple statistics tell me that of 10,128 people, some percentage of them are going to have an agenda. That is where things go horribly wrong. Back to my initial examples, maybe the Bride was has been driving my car and using the gas without my knowledge, maybe she took the batteries out of the remote because she wants to buy a new TV and maybe, just maybe our elected officials have a pharmaceutical plant in her district or a large military supplier in his district. You can quickly deduce that the game is rigged and there is no chance of a proper outcome. It is not the people, I am politically agnostic, it is the machine and methodology we are using in an attempt to solve our problems. The Republicans and Democrats are stuck in the same machine. The machine is so complex that many of them did not heed the little warning showing the little stick figure getting his arm stuck in the wood chipper and have been partially pulled in and are now doing ANYTHING to extricate themselves from the wood chipper.

I heard a story the other day that they have spent only 20% of the 780 billion, or about 156 billion has been spent to date. My biggest question is what are they going to do with the 600 some odd billion they have left? If they have only spent 20% and Ben Bernanke can say that the recession is over than put that make believe money (we are using the BIG credit card here folks) back into our collective wallets. Logic dictates that you cannot perform the same steps, only on a larger scale, and expect the results to be different. We Americans got into this financial crisis by spending money we did not have, we all are really to blame whether we want to admit it or not. Now to fix the problem we are going ahead and spend money we do not have. Now lots of people have said it but the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. I am not sure I understand how the government going this far into hock is going to solve this or any other problem, I see it as crazy and self serving, self serving to someone other than me! We seem to be being bombarded by information from the sky is falling folks as well as the folks who somehow think this mess is over. I sometimes think I am a simpleton, I am made to feel like that by the “smart” folks up in Washington and that pisses me off, especially when some sanctimonious politician gets up and while smiling for the cameras tells us everything is OK. BULLSHIT I say to that as I try to figure out how to pay my bills and the new government taxes that are being levied against me.

DO NOT TAKE THIS AS AN ATTACK ON A POLITICAL PARTY _ I HATE THEM BOTH EQUALLY!

The bottom line: If you really believe the recession is over, put the crack pipe down and wake the hell up.