Shock & Awe

Look at the monthly employment data chart. I have been making the case that the nosedive of recent months is directly tied to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then–U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson telling the U.S. Congress and the American people on Friday, September 18, 2008, that the sky was falling.

This was the day they asked Congress for an immediate $700,000,000,000—no questions asked—in order to support financial markets and deal with toxic assets polluting commercial and investment bank balance sheets.

The American consumer basically stopped spending at that point.

The loss of nearly 1.8 million net jobs during the past three months alone was the largest three-month loss since just after World War II, when the war effort was going through an awkward but longed-for conversion to peacetime.