Yoo-hoo, Congress

In a speech Friday, the chairman of the Federal Reserve essentially said that the Fed will do everything in its power to support a recovery that is fast losing its grip.
Exactly what the Fed might do is less clear.
Bernanke's speech at a Fed conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., came as the economy continues to sputter. Earlier in the nfl jerseys day, the Commerce Department reported that national output - Gross Domestic Product - rose at a spare 1.6% annual rate in the three months ended June 30, far worse than expected. While corporate profits are hovering near their pre-recession peak, unemployment remains persistently high - 9.5% nationally in July. That's not a recovery.
The Milwaukee area lost another 1,500 jobs in July and the state as a whole lost 38,000, according to preliminary statistics. And those numbers, as dour as they are, understate the problem significantly. There are more long-term unemployed in the United States now than at any time since the 1940s.
A renewed fear is falling prices, which could trigger a spiral that leads to deflation. A study by a pair of San Francisco 49ers jersey
Ivy League econometricians presented at the same meeting found that inflation could fall much further over the next 12 months. Such a scenario would be of grave concern to the Fed and would require aggressive action.
Bernanke said the Fed had several approaches in mind if needed, including buying long-term securities, which has helped to bring down long-term interest rates and reduce borrowing costs.
Additional congressional spending on programs or projects that quickly get money into the economy is needed as well. We'd also favor a federal jobs program, modeled on successful programs from the 1970s, that could both retrain and put people to work.
The Fed seems ready to do its part, but as Bernanke noted in his Seattle Seahawks jersey speech Friday: "Central bankers alone cannot solve the world's economic problems."
Congress? Are you listening?

Get answers about heinous murders, then talk forgiveness

There's a reason, I guess, that Paul Hadland - a pastor who spoke at the recent funeral of April Oles-Magdzas - is a man of the cloth and I am not.
April was a victim of a particularly brutal murder in Superior the other day.
Her 23-year-old husband, Matthew, a Wisconsin National Guardsman who had served in Iraq with a Milwaukee-based field artillery regiment, shot and killed her in the house they had once shared on Superior's N. 22nd St. He also shot their 13-month-old daughter, Lila, and killed a second daughter, a baby girl still inside her mother's belly who was going to be delivered by C-section the very day they were found.
Already named Annah, that little one was taken out of football jerseys the world before she was even allowed into it. Matthew Magdzas also killed their three dogs. Then, he killed himself.
It was, as Hadland told me in an interview a couple days after the funeral, "the worst of the worst. There is no denying that."
Here, though, is what else he said: At April's service at Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Cloquet, Minn., just days after the bodies were found, he urged forgiveness for Matthew. He was quoted as saying April would herself encourage that.
Forgiveness, he added in a subsequent interview with me, "is essential to free us from the hate." It is, he said, "when people forgive that they are able to let go." He also said that forgiving is not the same as forgetting or condoning.
"For some people, that forgiveness happened in that service," the pastor told me. "For some, it could take a while."
I, acutely aware of my theological shortcomings, admitted to the pastor I was inclined to play "devil's advocate" here. I hope I will not be seen as that literally. Still, I wonder in short how it is humanly possible to immediately forgive the inexplicably heinous and cold-blooded murder of two innocent children and their young mother.
Megan Henriques, one of April's good friends, told me her reaction right now is just "shock, big time." She thinks she will be able to forgive "someday," but right now would find it "kind of hard."
"I really don't know what April would say," she added. "She was so compassionate. But she was also a spitfire."
Indeed, with all due respect to the pastor, something seems to be missing where the possibility of St. Louis Rams jersey immediate forgiveness is concerned - what you'd think would be some necessary precursors.
Superior Police Capt. Chad La Lor confirmed that April "was not actively residing at the residence" where she was killed. There have also been media reports that Matthew Magdzas had been having an affair.
We know that some neighbors believe the shooter had post-traumatic stress disorder. Then again, the Superior Police Department currently has "no concrete information" about that, according to La Lor. They also don't have a suicide note or, it follows, any idea whether Matthew Magdzas was at all sorry about what he did. They are still investigating.
I have known people whose relatives have been murdered, people who have spent years of their lives trying to gather details and understand what happened; people vexed by heinous acts that are sometimes entirely intentional or, if accidents, the doings of people who never really accept responsibility.
Not everybody needs that sort of Super Bowl XLIII jersey process, it appears, to move on with their lives after losing somebody to murder.
But you'd think most people would need a little more information about why a killer killed, and some inkling of whether he might have regretted it, before really feeling forgiveness - let alone understanding what compelled a man to murder his wife and two children before ending things for himself.