Wonkette

The Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rate — “the” rate — by half of a percentage point today to 3%, a week after they freaked out and cut it by three-quarters of a point. Ben Bernanke and his minions indicated there may be more rate cuts on the way, too. Hooray! Eventually they can get that bitch down to 1%, then we can all buy mansions with $5 down payments and deal with the damn adjustable interest later. Because we’re all getting mansions! [AP/Breitbart]

This recession scare, it’s real. Too real! The Federal Reserve, much to Ron Paul’s dismay, lowered the fed funds rate by 3/4 of a percentage point today to stave off a, hrm, bank panic of neo-Victorian proportion! 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 »

Notorious CNBC host Jim Cramer, one of the prime suspects on our Aspberger’s Watch, welcomed Ron Paul to his Mad Money program on Friday, and the two proceeded to play tummysticks on the subject of abolishing the Federal Reserve. Cramer’s hatred of the central bank became YouTuberously famous in August when he ranted about how all his poor i-banker friends were watching their profit margins narrow as the Fed wasn’t acting on the mortgage crisis. So despite the Fed’s smooth resolve in staving off recession during various South Asian financial crises and Russian debt defaults in the mid- to late-90s — flushes of liquidity that allowed Cramer to accrue a $50+ million fortune as a hedge fund manager — he wants to get rid of it. Ron Paul can have him. [Mad Money]

It was like the Berlin Air Lift, but we sent planeloads of money instead of food. And it went to Iraq, where it all vanished. And the three massive cash shipments (in December 2003 and June 2004) were the largest transfers of cash money in the history of the U.S. Federal Reserve — some 363 tons of American dollars were stacked on wooden pallets and forklifted into cargo planes. The mafia could only dream of this shit! MORE »

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 »

We understand that Bush is announcing Alan Greenspan’s successor at 1PM. Barney’s working on an acceptance speech, but you know how hard Laura has been pushing Miss Beazley. MORE »