Bernanke: Recession Will Be Over in a Few Months

He actually said by the end of this year - but that's only a few months away:

America's recession "probably" will end this year if the government succeeds in bolstering the banking system, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Sunday in a rare television interview.

In carefully hedged remarks in a taped interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," Bernanke seemed to express a bit more optimism that this could be done.

Still, Bernanke stressed — as he did to Congress last month — that the prospects for the recession ending this year and a recovery taking root next year hinge on a difficult task: getting banks to lend more freely again and getting the financial markets to work more normally.

"We've seen some progress in the financial markets, absolutely," Bernanke said. "But until we get that stabilized and working normally, we're not going to see recovery.

"But we do have a plan. We're working on it. And, I do think that we will get it stabilized, and we'll see the recession coming to an end probably this year."

So basically, the "fundamentals" were "sound," but in order to end the recession, we had to dump trillions into the banks so that they could get rid of their bad "assets" and have money left over to spend and lend. Meanwhile, the "people" get thirty bucks a month in tax cuts. But the same players who engaged in the horrific lending and investment practices that caused a lot of this "mess" will still run the show. Great.

John Stewart's thrashing of Jim Cramer does not answer all the important questions. Perhaps he should debate a real economist.

See also: Fundamentals of the Economy Are Sound -- Really?