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]

Barack Obama gave a STERN SPEECH today to those evil Wall Street executives, who were barely able to suppress their giggles, but likely shat their pants instead, during bits like this: “I want everybody here to hear my words. We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses. Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.” The consensus reaction seemed to be along the lines of, Meh, we’re going to continue expecting that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break our fall. [NYT]

Look everyone, a wacky sentence: “WASHINGTON — Federal bank regulators plan to release the much-anticipated results of their ’stress tests’ on the nation’s 19 biggest banks next Thursday, several days later than they had originally expected, in part because some of the banks continue to disagree with the government’s initial conclusions.” You do remember these things — the banks, the government bailouts, the stress tests, YOUR LIFE, and that thing that ties them all together, the Economy — right? They’re still “big deals” even if they aren’t so much in the news, because now the issue of whether or not we should throw a few dumb ex-government lawyers in jail has become ALL THAT MATTERS, while people continue to starve. MORE »

Quick, stop selling your pitchforks on eBay — it’s time to stab people again! “WASHINGTON - Just months before the start of last year’s stock market collapse, the federal agency that insures the retirement funds of 44 million Americans departed from its conservative investment strategy and decided to put much of its $64 billion insurance fund into stocks.” And then the stocks PLUNGED of course but who could have known! They were at all time highs! Buy high sell higher, RIGHT? MORE »

President Obama has dispatched an army of sterilization goons to London in advance of the G20 meeting this week. Their task: to remove the gonads of any human who invades the “sterile area” around the president. Obama also sent his driver over early so that he could familiarize himself with the quaint English custom of driving on the wrong side of the road, a practice known locally as “buggery.” MORE »

Whoa, weird, Fox Business News has a delightful scoop today! They won a suit against the Treasury to release 10,000 pages in TARP-related government records, and for the good of mankind have already found a couple of funny anecdotes revealing cartoonish confusion and conflict. We’re starting to understand the mechanics of how AIG rips off the federal government so easily: the old racist means of pitting the bureaucrats against each other until they’ve all been killed off. MORE »

Here’s some thrilling footage of last Saturday’s much-hyped “bus tour” of various AIG executives’ mansions, in Connecticut. The people on this tour… they do not make as much money as the AIG executives. This frustrates them. So they either read letters aloud or deliver them to the AIG executives’ mailboxes. C’mon, really? At least take a shit on the lawn or something. [YouTube]

No real reason for this, but someone sent us a screen shot of this ad for some fellow called the Ass Man and we thought it was comical. Is there anyone in the world who would trust this man’s advice, or take a single word of his seriously? Pronouns, prepositions, it doesn’t matter, they are all lies. We have never seen this channel, the Fox Business one, but can only *imagine* what a Fox version of CNBC would be like. If anyone else sees ads of financial teevee anchors making hilarious claims about populism, please pass them along!

The stock market has rallied in response to Tim Geithner’s latest details on his plan to fix America’s Banks by giving them lots of money for their trash, which makes sense, because the new plan is good good GOOD for Wall Street! Imagine a world where the government put up like 85% of the financing for something that you wanted — a robot, say — and you only had to throw in 5%. But after realizing that the robot was, indeed a piece of crap, made from defaulted mortgage contracts instead of the usual metals, the government lost all of that 85% investment, and you only lost 5%, so whatever. Let us look into this modern marvel of financial engineering known as the “Public-Private Investment Fund.” MORE »

Your country, the United States, comes closer and closer to the brink of complete economic and militaristic (but mostly economic these days!) ruination with every passing second. Oh, don’t blame yourself, dear reader. Blame the government — yeah, you know the one! Because, due to a confluence of distant inaugurations, inept lame ducks and quietly ambitious second-tier Washington officials, we’ve got one foot in the Great New Depression II with the other about to step in… and yet we have no idea who is actually running the country! By our count, we have three (3) presidents right now, and they’re all just going around doing their own things while your money is literally dying. So which president, pray tell, is the REAL president right now? MORE »