The Great Ressession Is Not Over

Bernanke Signals Stepped-Up Efforts to Spur Economy

The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, gave his strongest indication yet that the central bank was ready to resume huge purchases of longer-term debt, and was
determined to prevent the economy from slipping into a cycle of falling prices.

While Mr. Bernanke emphasized that deflation was "not a significant risk for the United States at this time," he said the Fed "will strongly resist deviations from price stability in the downward direction." It was his most robust statement to date that the Fed would do its part to avoid a Japanese-style deflation from taking hold.

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Too late, Ben. Deflation and a decade of Japan's stagnant styled economy are here, and they're going to stay. Can't say the same for you, your boss or the morons in Congress who said they were going to come in and fix it. They wanted it, they got it. They threw a bunch of slush funds at it, took over a bunch of companies, continued to escalate foreign wars - and then decided to take over another 19% of the GDP with Obamacare. And they still haven't rolled up their sleeves to get the bad mortgages out of circulation - or dealt with Fredie or Fannie. Yeah, it's ALL Bush's fault. I didn't say Bush and his policies didn't build the kindling, but the Democrats are running around yelling fire - when they asked for, and are currently holding the garden hose. Don't kid yourself, they're just as much to blame for all this as everyone else, too. No one's getting out of here without some soot on their faces.

Start investing in ammo, gang. That is, while you can still get it.

Union Hired Non-Union Workers to Protest Hiring Non-Union Workers

Need some picketers make your protest more legit? You can hire picketers – yes, demonstrators-for-hire that march wherever you want them to march and chant whatever you want them to chant.

That in itself may be a solution, but when you’re a labor union protesting the hiring of non-union workers, then that’s a level up of hypocrisy and irony wrapped in kosher bacon.

Billy Raye, a 51-year-old unemployed bike courier, is looking for work.

Fortunately for him, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters is seeking paid demonstrators to march and chant in its current picket line outside the McPherson Building, an office complex here where the council says work is being done with nonunion labor.

"For a lot of our members, it’s really difficult to have them come out, either because of parking or something else," explains Vincente Garcia, a union representative who is supervising the picketing.

So instead, the union hires unemployed people at the minimum wage—$8.25 an hour—to walk picket lines. Mr. Raye says he’s grateful for the work, even though he’s not sure why he’s doing it. "I could care less," he says. "I am being paid to march around and sound off."

Jennifer Levitz of the Wall Street Journal reports: Link, and I promise I'm going to try harder to show my sources...

Expecting the unexpected doesn't work as expected

People who actually expect an unexpected event aren't more likely to spot these events than people who aren't anticipating anything, a new study suggests.

In the study, volunteers watched a video of two groups of people -- some dressed in black, others in white -- passing basketballs back and forth. The participants were told to count the passes between those dressed in white while ignoring those dressed in black.

At one point in the video, a person in a gorilla suit walked into the game, faced the camera, pounded his chest, and then walked out of view.

Some of the participants knew the gorilla would appear while others didn't know. All of those who had prior knowledge spotted the gorilla, compared to about half of those who weren't in the know.

However, only 17 percent of those who knew about the gorilla beforehand spotted one or more other unexpected events in the video, such as the background curtain changing color, compared with 29 percent of participants who didn't know about the gorilla beforehand.

"The main finding is that knowing that unexpected events might occur doesn't prevent you from missing unexpected events," researcher Daniel Simons, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in a university news release.

The study appears in the new journal i-Perception.

Still no word on that cancer cure.

I also wonder if the suit was rented, or if the study purchased it so that they could keep it in their office.