Thanks for all the help, Ben

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is up for confirmation again as our nation's chief money overlord and coin czar. So, in the face of high unemployment, a Fed that is viewed as completely uncaring as to the suffering of actual people/subservient to Wall Street/an unthinking cash spigot to the financial sectors that shitted our economy/completely abdicated it's oversight capabilities, and the fact that Jim DeMint, Jim Bunning, and Bernie Sanders have all placed holds on his confirmation, Benny is probably going to try real hard to show that he cares and fight for his job, right? Not exactly.

In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee today, where he's seeking re-appointment as the Fed's chairman, Bernanke called for cutbacks in Medicare and Social Security even as unemployment rises and the middle class is endangered.

And there was this, on efforts to create a stimulus that targeted jobs and employment.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday threw cold water on efforts to push a major new fiscal stimulus package.

Well, it's not like it's in the Fed's mission statement to "promote effectively the goals of maximum employment" or anything.

So let's see, in his bid to get reconfirmed he not only advocated for cutting Social Security and Medicare, but decried a second stimulus to address the whole employment problem our jobless recovery is having, all while the Fed isn't really living up to it's mandate to deal with unemployment, is freaking out over a non-existent inflation threat, is a non-existent regulatory authority, and is a money funnel to our financial betters. Is there anything else he's like to do? Perhaps sodomize all of our mothers while pouring sugar in our gas tanks? Maybe I'm naive, I just thought he'd maybe try to do something other than yell "Fuck you peasant, don't look me in the eye" before advocating the Fed's "go pound sand" posture towards America's jobless masses.

Thanks for all the help, Ben. I'd be nice if we had a Fed Chairman that had a better plan for unemployment than "do nothing", but I guess I was just hoping against hope. Luckily, this will probably cost him a less than unanimous confirmation. He'll probably only get 90 votes now.

Greenspan: "Whoops, my bad."

Greenspan Urges Tighter Regulation After `Breakdown'

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called for tighter regulation of financial companies, distancing himself from the free-market culture that he helped to create.

Firms that bundle loans into securities for sale should be required to keep part of those securities, Greenspan said in prepared testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Other rules should address fraud and settlement of trades, he said. Greenspan's office released the text ahead of the hearing scheduled for 10 a.m. in Washington.

The comments contrast with Greenspan's aversion to increasing financial supervision as Fed chairman from August 1987 to January 2006. He said in a May 2005 speech that ``private regulation generally has proved far better at constraining excessive risk-taking than has government regulation.''

Well golly, almost two decades, excuse me, two fucking decades of telling people to de-regulate or not to regulate you finally decide when you have no power and the bitter fruits of that harvest have come in that the fiscal policy you subscribed to over those two decades wasn't exactly the smartest thing and now we should do the exact opposite. Let me break out the slow golf clap for you. All it took was a complete global financial collapse putting the giant exclamation point on your tenure as Fed Chairman to see that self-regulation and no regulation are stupid ideas.

Thanks for finally coming to the table on that one. When you were telling everyone that the markets had become more stable than ever, when you fiercely attacked any attempt to put derivatives under scrutiny, opposing even minimal regulation, and cutting interest to the lowest rates ever it would have been nice if you told us it was all bullshit. But you're telling us now in a valiant effort to rehabilitate your legacy image the markets. You must have spent ages looking for that spine, I'm glad you found it. Your place in the stockades is third from right, you'll be here all morning, don't mind all the rotten fruit being thrown, it's part of the deal.

Is that the economy I smell burning?

If you haven't had to sharpen a stick to hunt and kill an animal for food, if you haven't had to burn the body of a loved one for heat, if you haven't decided whether your new homeless look will be the classic "trashcan bum" or "30's style w/ disheveled suit and fedora", if you haven't had to steal chickens so you had some tradeable good for the new barter economy, well then, count yourselves among the dozen or so people untouched by the horrific financial apocalypse: worldwide edition. Or maybe you live somewhere warm. Whatever, you can burn a family member for spite then.

In case you haven't looked at a paper, television, news blog, or heard the hushed whispers of "it was a financial sector worker" as EMT's hosed a bloody stain off the sidewalk, the worldwide economy collapsed harder today. All the world markets are down anywhere from 5% to 10%, with the Asian markets in Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Shanghai, and Singapore all eating it hard. The DOW immediately dropped 700 points before bouncing back to a not as horrifying 150 point loss. Don't get your hopes up, a half hour before the NYSE closes it'll dive, probably closing at another 500-700 point loss.

But don't worry, our unelected betters are on it. They're going to hold a meeting or something. Hank Paulson is going to continue to sit on the $700 billion that he had piled up in his shed, furiously masturbating to the money mountain. Why should he actually do anything with that money? Look Hank, I thought we went over this yesterday. Go buy equity stakes in these companies, injecting them with capital and providing the American taxpayer with a good level of security for the markets and their $700 billion investment. Economists agree, it's probably the best plan of action and actually qualifies as a good idea. You're authorized to do it. So go fucking do it.

For the rest of us, we sit and wait. Sharpening our pointy sticks to get them kill ready, ranking our friends and family by who we would leave behind for the roving gangs of street cannibals and who we would protect with said spears and fire sticks, and deciding whether we could organize a complete French-style revolution by Monday. Do we wait for the back ordered guillotines or move to rusty cutlasses and heavy crushing stones? Does Dick Cheney deserve disemboweling or must he be eaten alive by crows? Decisions. As we wonder whether our unelected and elected betters will finally decide this is the day to do something, all we are left is to ponder the important political issue of our time: Bill Ayers.