I think they are desperate because they don't see the expected recovery from their manipulations. They can't look at facts straight on, they've always got them skewed by so many factors they've edited out reality from the numbers they examine. Look at the job numbers charts for the recessions since 1950.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/ ... changes-4/
Which is terrible. What's more interesting is that private sector jobs are above the level they were in at the start of 2009, the big drop has been in government jobs. I could spend ten minutes mocking the election rhetoric with those facts, but I'll let you roll your own.
The despair comes from something most don't realize, the very wealthy are generally insecure people, well aware that shifting political or economic winds can take it away from them. Bernake is afraid of these kinds of changes and he's seeing them coming like a tidal wave. His reactions are much like someone who wants to put out a fire, but they've only got buckets full of gasoline. So he burns a little on this side and a little on that side trying to keep it contained in a firebreak, but he's not putting the fire out at all. The core problem is still there.
This is interesting, about mortgages.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/ ... ehold.html
"The value of household real estate is still $5.9 trillion below the peak."
"Household net worth was at $62.7 trillion in Q2 2012 (up $11.5 trillion from the trough, but still down $4.7 trillion from the peak)."
Looks like someone is putting money in the old piggybank. That's 1.2 trillion added to household net worth that isn't real estate. Or, since the low was reached in 2009, that would be about 400 billion per year not spent by consumers but added to net worth somewhere. Given that younger people are having immense troubles with student loan debt, this almost has to be older people with fear of retiring on a diet of cat food.