When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced a new round of unconventional monetary stimulus last month, he couched it in the language of grim necessity, saying:
“The employment situation… remains a grave concern…Fewer than half of the eight million jobs lost in the recession have been restored… Five million Americans have been unemployed for more than six months, and millions more have left the labor force—many of them doubtless because they have given up on finding suitable work.”
That was the rationale for an aggressive new effort to buy $40 billion worth of long-term mortgage-backed securities per month until, well, who knows?
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