Politicians say the darndest things. And that goes for their messengers, too, like Christopher S. Rugaber of the AP. The following paragraph contains two of those things:
The report shows jobs remain scarce even as most analysts believe the economy is pulling out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said earlier this week that the recovery isn’t likely to be rapid enough to reduce unemployment for some time.
Most analysts? Who are these mysterious people called analysts. On their IRS 1040 form do they report their occupation as “analyst?” Are they Mr. Rugaber’s beer drinking buddies? Are they the people who write partisan opinion articles for the newspaper when they’re supposed to be giving us news, and cover themselves by putting the word “Analysis” in the headline? We deserve to know. And what is “most”? 51 percent?
The second point is the one about needing a rapid recovery to reduce unemployment. I wouldn’t be surprised if a rapid recovery reduces unemployment at a fast rate while a slow recovery reduces it at a slow rate. I could even see that there would be a hysteresis effect. But here we’re being told that unless the recovery isn’t rapid, it won’t reduce unemployment at all. Weird. I wonder what makes that.