Recession ENDS!!!

America's recession "probably" will end this year if the government succeeds in bolstering the banking system, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Sunday in a rare television interview.

In carefully hedged remarks in a taped interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," Bernanke seemed to express a bit more optimism that this could be done.  A few short weeks ago, the Obama administration was proclaiming the beginning of an irreversible depression the likes of which we have never seen before and one that we would never be able to get out of if his Pelosi/Reid Pork Package was not passed and signed by President's Day.  The world's economy could have undergone complete collapse, without that spending package.  Now -- "Mission Accomplished!"

Still, Bernanke stressed -- as he did to Congress last month -- that the prospects for the recession ending this year and a recovery taking root next year hinge on a difficult task: getting banks to lend more freely again and getting the financial markets to work more normally.

"We've seen some progress in the financial markets, absolutely," Bernanke said. "But until we get that stabilized and working normally, we're not going to see recovery.

"But we do have a plan. We're working on it. And, I do think that we will get it stabilized, and we'll see the recession coming to an end probably this year."

In completely unrelated news, financial experts are predicting that unemployment figures will surpass the "sensitive" two million mark to become the highest they've been in over a quarter of a century, and will likely climb to higher than 3.3 million by the end of the year. 

These unemployed folks need to listen to Obama and get back to work.  Don't they know, this recession is (almost) over?!!!