No Relief In Sight

NO RELIEF IN SIGHT. That’s not a meteorological forecast that the current heat wave will continue unabated; it’s an economic forecast that the current recession will continue unabated. And the prognosticator is none other than Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

In his candid testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on July 21, Bernanke all but admitted that the Democrats’ pork-laden stimulus (spending) bill has done zero to stimulate the economy. And his predictions were bleak. The L.A. Times paraphrased him as saying: “unemployment is likely to remain stubbornly high for several years, straining families and endangering the nation's economic stability and competitiveness.” And it’s going to take a “significant amount of time” to restore the almost 8.5 million jobs lost in 2008 and 2009. In other words: NO RELIEF IN SIGHT.

Although Bernanke’s honesty was surprising, his message was not. Practically every economist in the U.S. has said that the Democrats are taking the economy in the wrong direction, and actually making things worse. Millions of average Americans are also seeing the storm clouds. And on July 21 Wall Street got the message too – after Bernanke’s testimony the Dow dived 183 points. To quote Bob Dylan: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

So is there really no relief in sight? Well, there’s no relief in sight only as long as the Democrats remain in power, and that will change come November. That’s when every intelligent American will go to the polls and vote Republican, the imperfect party that is our only hope. And then the cool winds of real change (not the hot air of chump-change) will blow away the scourge of socialism. Now that will be cool! Ah, I can almost feel the relief. That’s the kind of climate-change we can believe in.