U.S. Is Officially In A “Bagel”

When it wasn’t indoctrinating America with the fantasy of well-intentioned politicos (all of whom happened to be borderline Maoists), Aaron Sorkin’s hit show The West Wing did manage to produce some incredibly witty moments.

One of those moments involved a running joke on the show about how you didn’t say the word “recession” in the White House, that you used the innocuously meaningless term “bagel” instead.

Ironically, that’s been the approach of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private and ostensibly non-partisan assemblage of “leading economists” whose job is to ascertain the precise time at which America’s economy enters and exits its “bagels.”

Today, the NBER officially declared what the vast majority of Americans already knew, that our nation’s economy is in a “bagel.”

Of course, this pocket-protector brigade also informed us that America’s economy has been in a bagel for 11 months already, making this longest bagel in a quarter century.

From CNN:

The current recession is one of the longest downturns since the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

The last two recessions (1990-1991 and 2001) lasted eight months each, and only two of the 10 previous post-Depression downturns lasted as long as a full year …

Not surprisingly, things are going to get worse before they get better, as another 325,000 jobs appear to have been shed in November on top of the 1.2 million lost during the first ten months of 2008.

Additionally, a key manufacturing index recorded its lowest reading since May 1982, meaning that America’s manufacturing sector has basically fallen off of a cliff during the last two months.

Yikes-a-roni, people.

Making matters worse, the Dow Jones plunged another 400 points on the news of the “bagel” becoming official, putting it at around 8,300 – or nearly 6,000 points below its all-time high.

Again, we’ve got just one question for all those ass clowns up in Washington: How’s That Bailout Vote Looking Now?

Amazingly, Congressional Democrats are using this avalanche of bad economic news to push for more taxpayer-funded largesse, specifically a proposed mega-billion dollar bailout of state government bureaucracies.

Because if we’ve learned anything over the past few months, it’s that rewarding the same people whose colossal screw-ups landed us in this mess to begin with is an absolutely brilliant strategery … by Washington standards, at least.

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