I guess it must be official, if Ben said it. Yesterday at 10:56:40AM Eastern Time MarketWatch started spreading the news, “Fed Chief Bernanke: The Recession is Likely Over“. Watch your words here folks, the vocabulary is littered with exception traps! Here’s another classic, directly quoted from the closing lines of their newsflash, “Bernanke noted that many economists now expect the labor market to recover slowly. But he said this was only a forecast and might be wrong”. Wow – truly a lesson in how to categorically state something good will happen, albeit slowly, but in case it doesn’t, it was just a SWAG anyway – so no harm, no foul! Just so long as the media understands that their job is to convince the public that it is over. If the media can achieve that then the rest of us can get on with our jobs as minions to the economy – borrow some money and buy something!

I suggest we all proceed very carefully and whatever else we do, don’t stop avoiding your credit card just yet. There are a whole other group of pundits that are prognosticating a double dip – of the sort we are not likely to enjoy too terribly much.