Questions I have for Yellen (and others):

- Under what circumstances should an economy be permitted to enter a recession?

- Do business cycles serve any constructive role in a capitalist system?

- Is failure an important part of market economies?

- Should stocks always go up?

At the risk of seeming insensitive, failure is GOOD to extent that it provides INFORMATION such as ...

- whether an individual's talents are best directed elsewhere
- whether a cap allocator should be entrusted with more capital
- whether you are serving the needs of customers

Propping up failure encourages poor capital allocation, misdirection of scare resources in economy, keeps people in jobs they aren't suited for (reducing long-term success and happiness), and generally only delays the inevitable and makes the hangover far worse than it had to be.

Now you can argue that there is a certain level below which citizens of a country should not fall simply because they are citizens and part of society. That's fine, and if most people favor it, it can be done without destroying market signals by artificially propping up failure.