U.S. Bankruptcies Hit Record As Economy Recovers...So Says Humpty Dumpty.

There seems to be this completely brain-dead position that is again circulating within the zombie community - the jobless recovery. Who thinks this stuff up? I mean seriously? How can you have an economic recovery with unemployment and underemployment at one fifth of the working population - a post World War II record. With no jobs growth? How might that recovery be defined? What is a recovery other than jobs? That a Federal Reserve economist has now printed this mythology on its own web site is a sign of the utter silliness of the American economics community.

It bears repeating our prior remarks on this and other brain-dead arguments that never seem to die. Ben Bernanke is not God. The Federal Reserve does not control the economy. The Federal Reserve only controls one mechanism: credit. That the Federal Reserve restarted the credit engine and in the face of terrible fundamental dynamics is allowing corporations to issue record junk bonds, government to issue even more debt for its arrogant policies of international hegemony, people to buy even more homes and countless other examples of economic stupidity has only allowed the debt bomb to grow larger. We don't need more credit, we need more money. We couldn't pay our bills before this crisis. What's the chance we can pay them now that unemployment and underemployment have doubled in the last few years coupled with record new sums of debt? The answer to that question is simple......We just announced record bankruptcies in the latest reporting period.

The Sunday political television circuit with Washington politicians making their rounds with pliant corporatist journalists telling us the economy is better is beyond ludicrous. The economy has stabilized within a few percentage points of a temporary steady state due to record spending of other people's money and backstopping tens of trillions of dollars of financial and real estate assets with other people's money. Politicians are either lying for the purpose of political expediency or they are members of the same zombie community as the economics profession.

Get ready for the big hiring boom. You know, to serve the economic demands of the thirty million unemployed or underemployed Americans.