• The government will run into trouble with its loans once the Fed raises interest rates and might even lose its new 7-bedroom townhouse in Phoenix. [New York Times]
• Pedophiles keep molesting children, despite ankle monitor tracking devices things that strongly suggest they consider doing otherwise. [Washington Post]
• Short-term radiation leak at Three Mile Island this weekend! Pennsylvania is nuclear-capable, which means serious thought must be given to bombing it. [CNN]
• 21 Filipino hostages, including the wife of a guy running for governor, were killed after a rival political gang hijacked their convoy. [AP]
• The Brazilian President invited Ahmadinejad to Brazil, which is something the US might be mad about even though Ahmadinejad goes to New York like constantly. [LA Times]
• Here is the theme of today’s copy of the Internet: this MTV person had a totes scandalous performance on the teenager show. Everyone please hope Andrew Sullivan proves Bristol Palin is a hologram. [MTV News]

The Federal Reserve this afternoon is expected to cut the fed funds rate from 1% to .5%, a modern record. The government is printing more money than you can shake a stick at, all night, every night, to give to financial companies. This should be an incredibly sexy time to make LOANS. Overnight loans, car loans, Truck Nutz loans, who cares, loans loans loans, free money! The only problem is that we’ve developed a terrorist’s mindset in which the American economy, as a whole, has become the enemy. MORE »

So here are three major factors that contributed to our country’s world’s current financial misfortunes: prolonged periods of historically low interest rates (even negative real interest rates), the complete deregulation of such derivatives as credit default swaps, and encouragement from Washington that the inflated housing boom was nothing to worry about. It’s rare that you can pin so many large factors on one person, but, well, former Fed chief Alan Greenspan set the low interest rates, led the pressure on Congress to keep derivatives markets wholly deregulated, and was the voice from Washington that said everything was fine. MORE »

The front page of GOP.com — one of America’s top sources of humor — uses this graphic to represent “Obama’s Glass Houses.” It links to a scandalous item about how Obama locked into a modestly below-average mortgage rate because he had good credit. Oh no that is terrible oh no. We’re mostly interested in the “glass house” illustration in this graphic, however. Is that what a Liberal’s illegally-financed home looks like? All clear-like with fancy angles and such? Indeed, most Liberals live in subprime replicas of Dulles airport. [GOP.com]

The Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rate — its “big deal” interest rate — by another 3/4 of a percentage point this afternoon, bringing the number down to 2.25%. This is the second 3/4-point cut in recent months, meaning Ben Bernanke is probably on speed since that is a lot to cut. MORE »

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke testified about our flourishing American economy to Congress again today, and the economy’s just not good at all! He signaled more rate cuts would come to stave off the growing credit crisis, but balanced it with fears of inflation. As the Federal Reserve noted in its semi-annual policy report today, it foresees “a negative combination of below-trend growth and inflation rates topping 2% this year, though conditions are expected to start improving in 2009.” So we’ll have horrible stagflation for all of 2008, but Ben Bernanke will make 2009 wondrous! MORE »

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]