At some point during Barack Obama’s press conference last night — toward the end, after summarizing the major works of the European baroque period, but before reading the entire text of War and Peace in response to a question about baseball — he told reporters to hold onto their pants, because Tim Geithner’s first big press conference Tuesday morning was going to blow their fucking minds. How did it go? Eh, big numbers being tossed around, a lot of crying, the whimpering sounds of a crumbling Empire, crumbling, crumble crumb crumb… MORE »

Hey it’s Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on Thursday, so Barack Obama is giving a commemorative primetime news conference right now! (He would do it on Thursday, but that would preempt Survivor. It’s never too early to ruin one’s reelection chances.) Here’s Ken’s “pre-game blog,” but now let’s see what the man himself has to say. Will he promise us all gold, like Ron Paul did? MORE »

Ok let’s see what sort of DRACONIAN MEASURES Barack Obama has proposed for our nation’s permanent underclass of persecuted corporate CEOs, whose only sin was caring so much about their companies that they continued to happily accept record pay and bonuses while their businesses lost literally billions of dollars and had to be bailed out by the government. MORE »

We last heard of “Iceland” in the fall during those first exciting weeks of the Global Great Depression, when our proudly “interconnected” global economy did what it ultimately was designed to do: self-implode all at once. Since most/all of Iceland’s prosperity in the last decade was derived from a burgeoning financial sector, all of its banks immediately defaulted and were nationalized; the government raised interests rates to 18% or so to secure a do-or-die loan from the evil IMF, leading other European countries to call them losers and de-friend them, and voila: welcome to the THIRD WORLD, Iceland! Hope you remembered to pack a lunch! This was the backdrop for this week’s developments, in which every government official got cancer and resigned, and then the government *itself* resigned, and now they’re just going to let some lesbian run everything. MORE »

• K STREET BANK LOOTED: Somebody robbed the PNC Bank at 14th and K. Obviously it was lobbyists driven insane with fear that they will all turn into impoverished destitute train-ridin’ hobos once Barack Nobama comes to town and taxes them for working hard. Either that or, you know, bank robbers, either one. Thanks to Rebecca for bringing this terrible pillage and plunder to our attention. (Update: You are right, whoever pointed out that link was to a different robbery. Banks are getting robbed, everywhere. Who even knows if the PNC at 14th and K actually got robbed? Only “Rebecca.”)

• GO GET YOUR MONEY PEOPLE: Collapsing investment banks are yesterday’s news, trendsetters! Now we can turn our attention to the biggest possible commercial banks failing miserably, like, say, Washington Mutual. And when that collapses on Sunday, probably, it will likely drain up what’s left of the FDIC’s insurance fund. The FDIC can always get more money from the Treasury, or we can just have a BANK RUN!!! EVERYONE RUN TO THE BANK!!! PANIC! CHAOS FIRE OBAMA BURN!! [AP]