Call this one a sin of omission, rather than a sin of commission. Barack Obama interrupted his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard on Monday to make an announcement on the economy — reappointing Ben Bernanke to a new term as Fed chairman. As Andrew Malcolm points out, however, Obama and Bernanke both managed to avoid talking about the real news in economic policy:

And if this Monday financial reappointment distracts even 100 people from the positively colossal, mind-numbing new federal deficit numbers also released by the White House today, then this reappointment will have served its PR purpose.

Turns out the White House was off in its 10-year April deficit estimate by about $2 trillion out of about $7 trillion, as The Ticket chronicled here earlier today. That’s a miscalculation of 2,000 billion dollars. …

Whatever your side, such a deficit won’t be successfully hidden by an August Friday leak and an ensuing Monday morning news dump and has now officially entered the autumn healthcare debate.

Bernanke had five months left on his term, so Obama hardly needed to interrupt his vacation to make the announcement.  It was an amateurish attempt to swamp out the bungled deficit numbers, after the weekend failed to move it off of the front pages following the White House’s Friday night doc dump announcing the new budget reconciliation figures.  If that fooled 100 people into forgetting the $2,000,000,000,000+ math error by Obama’s collection of economic wizards, I’d have to call them … Congressmen.

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