9% unemployment....yet companies are making record profits...sounds like squeeze the peasant time!

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the U.S. is facing a crisis with a jobless rate at or above 9 percent since April 2009, and that fiscal discipline would help spur the economic recovery.



“This unemployment situation we have, the jobs situation, is really a national crisis,” Bernanke said in response to questions after a speech yesterday in Cleveland. “We’ve had close to 10 percent unemployment now for a number of years and, of the people who are unemployed, about 45 percent have been unemployed for six months or more. This is unheard of.”


The chairman is contending with the most opposition on the Federal Open Market Committee in almost 19 years, with three policy makers opposing the central bank’s decision last week to push down longer-term interest rates. Fed regional bank presidents Thomas Hoenig of Kansas City and Richard Fisher of Dallas spoke out against the plan this week, while Eric Rosengren of Boston backed it and Dennis Lockhart of Atlanta said the move will probably have a “modest” effect.


The speech was Bernanke’s first since the Fed announced on Sept. 21 that it would replace $400 billion of short-term debt in its portfolio with longer-term Treasuries in an effort to further reduce borrowing costs and strengthen the flagging economy. U.S. growth has stalled even as the Fed purchased $2.3 trillion in assets in two rounds of quantitative easing and held interest rates near zero since December 2008.


“Monetary policy is not a panacea,” Bernanke said. “There are certainly some areas where other policy makers could contribute,” and “strong housing policies to help the housing markets recover would certainly be useful.”