A Rock and a Hard Place: A Definition

The economy created just 41,000 new jobs in May, one-fifth the number in April, and about half of the new jobs needed to keep up with population growth.

Fifteen million Americans are without jobs of any kind, and a substantial number will be out of unemployment benefits in the next few weeks. That means no income at all.

All of the stimulus money has now been spent on Larry Summer's cock-a-mamie, pie in the sky, high tech, maybe some day, white collar jobs. There is no more money so we will have to borrow more money from the Chinese to create the jobs.

But that will increase the deficit, and even the Republicans are started to get worried.

Here is Politico's take on Uncle Ben's take on the problem.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday that Congress needs to develop a plan to manage the nation’s burgeoning debt, because the federal budget “appears to be on an unsustainable path.”

Testifying before the House Budget Committee on the state of the economy, Bernanke urged lawmakers to take decisive action to show investors that the country can get back on the right financial path. But he did not offer any specific remedies.

As Congress prepares to take up emergency spending legislation in the next few weeks, the deficit has created a “structural budget gap that is both large relative to the size of the economy and increasing over time,” Bernanke said.

"We need to convince markets in the medium and longer term that we have a sustainable fiscal path for balancing our budget or at least bringing our deficits down," he said, later adding "medium-term" means three to five years down the road.

“If confidence is lost in our long-term fiscal stability, we will see our interest rates go up quite a bit and that would affect the consumer's ability to buy houses,” he said. “It would slow our economy, and it would put pressure on the balance sheets of financial institutions.”

Bernanke said the Fed has a long-term plan for managing monetary policy, and Congress should have a similar plan for managing the fiscal side.

“Right now, there’s not anything on the table,” he said.

As he warned lawmakers they need a plan to manage growing deficits, Bernanke also defended the decisions that contributed to those deficits in the first place, like the Troubled Asset Relief Program and stimulus funding, saying the government had to spend money to prevent America’s economy from completely collapsing last year.

The Fed chairman also responded to lawmakers’ concerns about the European debt crisis, saying leaders are “aggressively” handling their financial crisis, which he believes will only have a “modest” impact on economic growth in the United States.

And there you have it. A Rock and a Hard Place. What do you think should happen next?