fool me once.

federal reserve chairman ben bernanke spoke to congress today about the current state of the economy and stated that he felt that the economy "should pull out of the recession and start growing again by the end of this year".

yay.

he later warned that even with economic recovery underway, economic activity is expected to remain slugglish and businesses will continue to hiring sparingly. the nation’s unemployment rate is expected to increase to about 10% causing a considerable amount of job losses.

note: an unemployment rate is never ideal but an ideal or manageable unemployment rate is around 4.5%.

so wait. what?

slow economic activity? decrease in jobs? increase in unemployment?

exactly how are you measuring economic growth, mr. bernake? nothing that followed you saying that you expect to see growth by the end of this year indicates economic growth of any kind.

mr. bernanke, those are last year's numbers.