The notoriously short-fused Treasury secretary is monumentally, ear-reddeningly pissed about the unemployment rate, he told the House Appropriations Committee this morning. “The current unemployment rate of 9.7% is unacceptable by any metric,” he said. He hates it. Would like to beat it, punch it, strangle it with his bare hands. Or, failing that, inject several billion of newly printed American dollars into programs that spur job growth. But isn’t all of this printing of money and ballooning of the deficit bad for the system as a whole? Wouldn’t it be bad if, for instance, the United States was so awash in debt that it lost the Triple A credit rating? No! The Treasury secretary said. Screw that! “There’s no way that’s going to happen.” [WSJ]
