Age of Obama or Bernanke?
by Ed O'Boyle - posted Thursday, March 7th, 2013 @ 12:00 pm

Reporting in The Orange County Register, Joel Kotkin asserts emphatically that we are living in the Age of Bernanke and that the American civilization is headed in the same direction as the Roman Empire — into "inexorable decline." His remarks have gotten some traction in several blogs but as far as we can tell not on broadcast media or cable TV.

In the simplest of terms, Kotkin argues that big banks and big businesses are destroying the United States and that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has been the key player enabling this destruction. The problem is that the data sources he employs to establish his human destruction claims don't support his argument. They have the effect if not the intent of deflecting responsibility away from President Obama.

If as Kotkin claims, citing Invest.com, "8.5 million workers have exited the labor force," why is it that according to the BLS the civilian labor force today is actually bigger than in January 2009 when Obama was inaugurated?
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Edward J. O’Boyle is Senior Research Associate with Mayo Research Institute. He has offices in West Monroe, Lake Charles and New Orleans. He can be reached at 381-4002 or edoboyle@earthlink.net.