[Recession]

So the word has finally been dropped. "Recession" hit the House floor yesterday, having fallen from the mouth of 2008's best-suited speaker for the occasion, the year's biggest upstart, Ben Bernanke. This is no shocker, given the straight talking Americans have become accustomed to over the course of his six hearings before Congress thus far. Rather, the import that necessitates a blogging resides in what Bernanke's latest remarks represent. Following the tone set by Congress against the background of election-year reform politics, this is the latest episode of the legislature and the people taking matters into their own hands after an increasingly out of touch and unresponsive executive has proven ill-equipped to deal with the new and unprecedented obstacles that face the American public. With the recent stimulus legislation coming out of Congress, Bernanke's characterization comes at the perfect time. It was early enough to ingrain him as the first in the minds of the American people, but late enough to give the impression that, were it not for this straight-talking scion, the truth may never been fully articulated by the government. Coupled with the rising tide of reform mongering from all sides under the context of the election, this latest hearing heralds an era of popular and political reaction to the idle folly in which the leadership has wallowed, specifically regarding the post-housing crisis economy.

These days, everyone with a soap crate (or a blog) and an idea seems to have a new plan for the American economy. The Democratic candidates' tour of Rust Belt Pennsylvania over the past week has underscored this mentality. Be it Hilary's bold, reassuring proposals or Obama's eloquent way of telling it like it is, the tour has smacked of plans for the economy. And as well it should, given its primacy in the American mind. In an election where these disenfranchised, middleAmerican Homesteaders may well decide the contest, the economy has shown every sign to pique their concern over the future of the American leadership. But more of that when the issue matures. Right now, regardless of campaign trail reform talk, the voice that posterity will remember as a herald of change echoed in Congress yesterday; and it dropped the word that even Clinton and Obama were cautious to enough to step around. By the time Ben Bernakne's term is up in December, he will have established himself as the able hand under which the nation, for want of direction from the executive, turned to for a tempered, highly educated opinion. And he's not afraid to tell it like it is to get his point across. 2008 may, as an inadvertent consequence of many conspiring factors, indeed be a year of real change, immediately foreseeable and enduring.