Recession is losing steam according to Fed chairman

Today Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, stated that he felt that the recession was losing steam and that there would be economic growth later this year. His basis for making those remarks rest upon a bottoming housing market, an increase in consumer spending and businesses having liquidated almost all excess inventories. Bernanke cautioned that the recovery will likely be slower than usual and that unemployment will likely remain high for some time.

All of this is standard, boilerplate-type language that is uttered toward the end of every recession by some official. So the specifics are not so interesting, what is interesting is that the flag has been planted – the recession is almost over. Given the absolute shit storm that would hit if Bernanke was wrong, you can bet that he is very certain of himself to have made the comments that he did today.