Bernanke between the lines: We're in for the mother of all jobless recoveries

Given all the crazy, extraordinary stuff the Federal Reserve has been dragooned into doing in the last year ("quantitative easing," anyone?), it's easy to forget that it has only two, very simple mandates: price stability and full employment. Reading between the lines of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech Monday, it's clear the Fed will utterly fail on the second part of its directive for years to come.

In other words, we're in for the mother of all jobless recoveries. Indeed, the best thing Bernanke could say about the unemployment situation is that it "may be getting worse more slowly."