Whoa hey… whoa… what the hell? “The United States government unveiled $800 billion worth of new loans and debt purchases on Tuesday, hoping another massive infusion of cash would smooth troubled credit markets and make borrowing easier for homebuyers, small businesses and students.” Ha ha, it’s like the original TARP, but for consumers and eggheads — and this time, to hell with the Congressional “funding approval”! It’s much easier for Hank Paulson to drag his ass to a podium some random Tuesday morning and just start stone cold announcin’ the motherfucker. MORE »

Well, that was a fun week in finance news. So what did the markets get, after the U.S. government decided to end market capitalism and become the Soviet Bank of Soviet America? Stocks ended the week flat, that’s what. Monday morning, the Dow opened at 11,421. Today, after this unprecedented nationalization of AIG and promises of some “We Buy Your Crap” market run by the Fed, the DJIA closed at 11,388. (The S&P 500 was about the same, starting the week at 1,252 and ending at 1,256.) A half-trillion in new U.S. debt just doesn’t buy what it used to! [Schaeffers Research]

Turns out we didn’t need “stealth socialist” Barack Obama to pervert capitalist America into a crumbling nationalized economy run in private by a dome-skulled kleptocracy as our nation’s battered military wastes away in the forgotten bummer of a civil war in Afghanistan. WAIT A MINUTE that is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union! And the so-called Republicans did it, because they are Fiscal Socialists! MORE »

Thanks to Martin Luther King Jr.’s stand for economic justice and his resulting assassination which provided U.S. markets with a holiday from the global economic collapse, Wall Street didn’t get hit again until this morning. And by “Wall Street,” we mean your 401k, 403b, IRA, access to basic business or consumer credit, income, value of your house, and value of your young children’s labor (selling apples down on Main Street by the Starbucks soup kitchen). But don’t worry, because Ben Bernanke and his Federal Reserve superheroes just did an emergency interest rate cut. Head over to the PayDay Loan joint and pick up a case of Cristal! MORE »

It’s nice of the Washington Post to, directly under their article insisting that Fed chief Ben Bernanke calmed Wall Street (subhead: “Bernanke Upbeat As Stocks Rebound”), link to the Milbank column that points out how Ben Bernanke didn’t really say much of anything. Saves us the trouble. MORE »

Resident cartoon expert the Comics Curmudgeon stops by each and every Friday to guide us through the magical world of Today’s Cartoons. They tackle the issues of the day, then we clothesline them. Circle of life or some shit.

This week, Hezbollah saves New Orleans and Pluto, Disney’s intellectual property is stolen, and pirates brutally murder children. It’s all after the jump.

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We must admit, when we see a piece in The New Republic headlined “Another suspect Bush Appointee,” our eyes tend to glaze over. Were we to see one titled “Good Job with that Appointee There, Mr. President,” we would be more interested (but not much more inclined to actually read the piece), after, of course, checking the date to make sure that it wasn’t a holdover from the days when Bush could do no wrong in their moderate-classical-liberal-whatever eyes. MORE »