"What a relief," reported Ben Bernanke when commenting on the job loss figures for the first three months of 2009. "We are finally getting some traction from stuffing all this money into the economy--American businesses are laying people off in unprecedented numbers but not in really, really humongous numbers."
Bernanke emphasized that since consumer confidence is the key to economic recovery all future economic statistics would be compared to something worse.
"Let me give you an example." he said. "If I tell you that California has fallen into the ocean, you might feel bad and too shocked to run out and buy some consumer goods. However, if I tell you that no large meteor has struck the earth recently, which is good news for everybody except all the people in California, you will probably have more confidence and may even feel like buying a car. It is all relative, you see."
When questioned about how those 2 million people who lost their jobs might feel, Bernanke blinked a few times and said, "You don't have a PhD in economics do you?"
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