Bernanke: Recovery ‘faltering,’ so let’s do more of what hasn’t worked

Even though politicians like to pretend otherwise, there is no economic recovery going on. It’s pure fiction. No matter how much money Ben Bernanke shoves out the door of his helicopter, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men haven’t been able to put the economy together again.

Instead of facing the reality that what the Fed has been doing for the past few years can’t work and won’t work, Bernanke told Congress this week that the Fed is ready and willing to intervene yet again. He vaguely warned, though, that the Fed can’t do everything:

“Fostering healthy growth and job creation is a shared responsibility of all economic policymakers, in close cooperation with the private sector,” Bernanke said.

In other words, we need a new Five Year Plan, comrades.

When are the politicians going to finally admit that they don’t know what to do? When are they going to admit that the things they’ve done so far have made things even worse? When are they going to admit that the foundations of their hocus pocus are flawed?

Sadly, some people so invested in the idea of “doing something” that they forget that their first responsibility is to quit making things worse. Even if Bernanke and Barack Obama and every member of Congress suddenly discover this, it’s unlikely that they would have the courage to admit they had messed things up and then get out of the way of the market to fix things. Instead, they’re going to keep making things worse.