Harried Money Emperor Ben Bernanke testified in Congress again today about upcoming financial regulation measures and apparently pleased the Socialists by saying that increased transparency won’t do the trick — you have to straight-up ban certain financial instruments, starting with, say, the ones where lenders throw trillions of dollars of credit at random hobos without so much as even asking their names. Rep. Michele Bachmann was awarded some valuable questioning time during this taxpayer-funded government meeting, and got right to the heart of the matter: what are you going to do about ACORN, and is there going to be a New Global Currency that we’ll have to use by like tomorrow? Barney Frank and Ben Bernanke take these questions very seriously. [HuffPo, YouTube]

Sometime in January, the US Mint realized that the word “quarters” can refer both to a unit of currency as well as some sort of defined area of space. It is literally impossible to overstate the significance of this determination. To wit: Meet the “United States Mint America the Beautiful Quarters Program,” which begins issuing new quarters next year and will do so, at the breakneck speed of five per year, until 2021. The quarters are beautiful because instead of state flowers and state historical war whatever, they have images of national parks and shit, which are also quarters that are also beautiful. It is a priceless infinite regression that can be yours, starting in 2010, for 25 cents. MORE »

Well, this is odd! Let us pray for the children that this ad never airs between 6AM and 10PM. UTTER VULGARITY. (Obviously this online ad will never make it onto American TVs; it was produced for the Web by a German agency, so it’s “way out of the non-queer American mainstream.”) [Copyranter]

Here is a rather low-budget rip of “war correspondent” Michele Bachmann crying with Sean Hannity over how everyone makes fun of her for raising issues that literally do not exist. The actual elected Congressional legislator has judiciously spent her time introducing a constitutional amendment “to prohibit the President from entering into a treaty or other international agreement that would provide for the United States to adopt as legal tender in the United States a currency issued by an entity other than the United States,” because she thinks the United States is trying to replace the dollar. Again: she thinks the United States is trying to replace the dollar, as its currency. MORE »

Remember the other day when China said, “Hmm, maybe we want a global reserve currency that isn’t the dollar, as America’s compulsive overborrowing will most certainly lead to hyperinflation, which would suck for us”? This caused our favorite Bush-groping crazed baby-farming Minnesota representative, Michele Bachmann, to propose legislation banning the replacement of the dollar with any other currency … in the United States. MORE »

• WE’RE RICH AGAIN!: Ha ha, gay Europe is now bailing out all of its banks too, meaning the dollar is somehow rising like a biotch against their fancypants “pound” and “euro.” AMERICA FUCK YEAH, now let’s go buy all of their stuff and burn it because fuck fucking Europe, losers. [Bloomberg]

Ron Paul’s biggest fear — the conglamo-fascist North American Union and its henchman, the NAFTA superhighway of greeeed! — is rapidly coming to fruition: you are now able to purchase Ameros, the would-be currency of the Hitlerish NAU. Granted these Ameros are made by some random dude to be collector’s items, no real political statement attached, but obviously the Paultards will be all up in this shit. I pray for your life, dear souvenir coinmaker! [DC Coins]

Police in Aiken, SC have arrested a man for trying to open a bank account with a $1 million dollar bill. How did Alexander Smith of Augusta, Georgia come across such valuable currency? Probably by making it himself on Photoshop, because it was of course counterfeit. Extremely counterfeit! And when the bank tellers pointed this out to him, he started cursing them all out. Then the police came and NORFED his ass. [AP/Yahoo]

“The Canadian dollar’s meteoric rise accelerated this week, rising two cents in less than 24 hours. The loonie broke through the US$1.10 barrier in overseas trading Wednesday, initially hitting the 110.02 cents US mark…. Analysts say it doesn’t appear that the loonie will be returning to earth anytime soon.” Ha ha Dennis Kucinich something or other. [The Canadian Press/Yahoo!]