because everybody love it when I write about monetary policy

"Nice central bank you got here. Shame if something should happen to it." - Ezra Klein       As the Central Bank ponders it's next step, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is certain of only one thing - one wrong move and he's in for a world of hurt.   He's in a precarious position, and has already been warned about the consequences of missteps by no less of a luminary than economic mastermind Governor Rick Perry, the man who single-handedly created twenty-three million jobs in Texas, and warned Bernanke a full month ago not to be "printin' more money."   "Printin' more money to play politics at this particular time in American history," Perry said, pausing to lick his lips and finger his concealed weapon, "is almost treasonous. In my humble opinion, that is. Hellfire, did I say almost? I don't want to be hedging my words, so you can just forget about that one. If this varmint prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Texas ugly."   "Oh man, that sure sounds like a threat to me," Bernanke said at the time. "I mean, treason is a capital offense, and Governor Perry is not known for his leniency, so just in case he's the next president, I guess the one thing I don't want to be doing is printin' more money."   Since Perry's dire warning, Bernanke has received a cavalcade of insults, ultimatums, and veiled threats from every corner of the RepubliTea™ party. And then this Monday, just hours before the Fed was scheduled to convene it's quarterly meeting, Bernanke received a letter hand delivered by a large man named Luigi signed by the four horsemen of the RepubliTea™ party, Boehner, McConnell, Kyl, and the odious Cantor.   "Dear Chairman Bernanke," it began ironically, "It is our understanding that the Board Members of the Federal Reserve will meet later this week to consider additional monetary stimulus proposals. We write to express our reservations about any such measures." The letter then went on to suggest that the very best thing the Fed could do was absolutely nothing, and "that if, God forbid, the economy should somehow happen to improve before the 2012 election, your ass is grass and we're the human lawnmower."   "We obviously couldn't just do nothing," Bernanke said this afternoon following the Feds announcements of it's latest move. "So we've taken a middle course which should kind of look like nothing to these, uh, fine statesmen, which is to rebalance our portfolio, shifting some of our short-term securities into long-term holdings. Surely that can't be construed as some kind of monetary stimulus or..."   "Did somebody just call me a statesman? Where is that bearded socialist? Just wait till I get my hands on that treasonous varmint!"   "Uh oh," said Bernanke, breaking out into a sweat. "I think that was Rick Perry and it sounds like he's heading my way."

Path to Prosperity

Ryan shows a projection of economic growth under his budget   "This is not a budget," said House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, unveiling his 2012 budget proposal. "This is a cause. Or more accurately, it's a blueprint for the future. It's so many things. It's the Path to Prosperity. It's kind of like Google Maps in a way, so forget about the blueprint part because that really doesn't fit into my metaphor, and if there's one thing that Americans are tired of, it's mixed metaphors. So I just want to be careful not to be accused of throwing the baby out with the haystack. Not that I won't do it, I just don't want to be accused of it."   Ryan admits that given an environment where sixty billion dollars is for some reason seen as a big fucking deal, he may encounter some resistance in a budget that promises to cut six trillion in ten years while lowering the top tax bracket from thirty-five to twenty-five percent, slashing aid to the poor and middle class, and dismantling Medicare and Medicaid.   "Don't forget ending infrastructure and education spending, alternative energy development, counterterrorism and veterans benefits," chuckles Ryan. "A lot of people have a vested interest in those programs too. But at the end of the day, this is all about the Path to Prosperity. See, it's right there in my title. Most people would have just called this the 2012 GOP Budget proposal, but not me. Paul Ryan doesn't take the easy path. Everyone is going to suffer under my plan. Well, not everyone, but hard working Americans are going to really feel the pain. The upside, however, is twenty-three million new jobs by 2019. And those jobs are important, because most people are going to need three or four of them."   "We are here to try and fix this country's problems. If that means we are giving our political adversaries a political weapon to use against us, shame on them. But I say, go on, try to exploit this budget, because it's not nearly as much fun being in the majority as I thought it was going to be."

The Big Bamboozle

The case had gone cold as quickly as it had grown hot, no clues and no contact, but at least up until now there had been no body either. Crap, I lose one more client the hard way and I'm gonna have to take up drinking even cheaper rotgut than what I'm reduced to now.   Sipping and waiting, watching the phone like some sort of basket case. Because I know it's going to ring, I know Boehner inside and out, I just don't know how to make him stop the madness. He was a two-bit operator for years, a bag man in a fancy suit, passing out the payoffs from the big boys who owned his ass. He kept things under control in those days, didn't step out of line and get himself hurt like so many of the other cheap thugs that surrounded him. Maybe that's how he managed to get to the top, just by keeping his ass out of the scrapyard.   In twenty-four hours it would be too late to stop him. Eighteen hours to be exact, but who's counting? Eighteen hours until Boehner brings down the whole house of cards. But I know from experience that if I play my cards right, it's never going to fall. Boehner's not dumb enough to kill a goose that can lay a golden egg. At least I don't think he's that dimwitted, although it seems to me that power can do a hell of a job clouding the mind.   He'd had Sammy for about three months now. At first nobody believed it because this wasn't the sort of vice he had trafficked in for the last twenty years. Then Sammy called one day, nervous and stuttering, just a message on my phone and then a click. Said Boehner wanted thirty billion or he was gonna get hurt big time. The Company heard the message, didn't quite believe it, but decided that they'd pay anyway. Sammy was the head of the family, they didn't feel like they could survive without him, so they were willing to front the dough as an insurance policy. Bad decision. Boehner doesn't play that way and he's got nothing but scorn for anybody who does.   Of course you know what happens next, standard operating procedure. Thirty bills becomes sixty and all of a sudden there's a shitload of strings attached. Boehner wants the Company to give up certain vital business interests, interests that Boehner's owners insist on keeping for themselves - the medical racket, environmental 'protection', even their interests in the entertainment industry. And sure enough, these demands come with the usual persuasion, lurid photographs of Sammy stripped, bound and gagged, along with a threat that if they don't get four bills as an interest payment in the next week, things are going to get a lot worse.   The Company folded like a cheap suit and paid up. A hundred sixty-eight hours to decide what to do next, but they couldn't figure it out, because it looked like Boehner intended to put them out of business no matter what they decided. A week went by and a package slipped in through the mail slot. Grisly shit, but I've seen my share of grisly shit in my life and this was far from the worst of it. Two pinkies, individually wrapped in plastic, and there was no doubt as to the hands where they belonged. And there was a new demand, six more bills for two more weeks and then the cutting continued. The Company reluctantly paid, but they still had no plan.   The phone finally rang, startling me so badly that I nearly dropped my drink. I let it ring three times before answering.   "Harry R, Private Eye," I said, trying to sound casual. The voice on the other end was frantic but recognizable.   "Jesus, Harry, where are you? These guys are crazy! They just... I'm losing a lot of blood. Boehner just cut off both my middle fingers. They want twelve more bills for two more weeks and then they're gonna plug me. I think that..."   I heard a thud followed by the sound of something heavy sliding to the floor. Then a cold familiar voice came on the line.   "Hello, Harry. I'm guessing you were expecting this call. Give my regards to the Company, won't you, and tell them time has about run out. It won't be pretty what happens next, but you know that already... And Harry? Have a nice day."   "Christ on crutches," I mutter. To myself, because the line was deader than Max Cady in 'Cape Fear'. These are not legitimate businessmen, and I knew then and there that their demands would never end.   A man can survive the loss of a couple fingers once the bleeding is controlled, so I hadn't been overly worried about the loss of the pinkies. Even the absence of a ring finger, while unfortunate, is something less than tragic. Now the amputation of an index finger is pretty serious; it makes it almost impossible to properly puff a butt, although with enough therapy you can regain the ability to smoke with a modicum of dignity. But without a middle finger a man can't even flip off his tormentors, and that loss of dignity is a terrible thing to contemplate.   I sat there in a cold sweat, finally breaking out of my trance long enough to pour myself three fingers. Bad choice of words, I know.  I though about it further and filled the glass. So little time and no viable options. I felt queasy, knowing that even if the Company did pay the ransom, my fee was probably a lost cause.

Senate approves new jobless training

The Senate today passed a new program for jobless training by an margin of 64-36. The new bill, with a startup cost of $450 million, is known as the HOBO Act (Homeless, Obsolete, Broke and Outtawork), and will provide training in at least two dozen major urban areas across the country. Unlike many failed programs in the past which attempted to provide job skills that employers preferred to outsource anyway, the HOBO program will focus on the skills required to deal with joblessness. "Over the years, the word hobo has taken on an undeservedly negative connotation," said Jim DeMint, one of the co-sponsors of the bill. "The truth is that hobos hold a very noble and important place in this nation's history. They're not like tramps, who work only when they absolutely have to, and nothing at all like bums, who don't work at all. They're colorful vagabonds who travel around the country, taking whatever work may come their way, whether it's picking vegetables, working in carnivals, or painting your garage for the price of a sandwich."   "This is a far better use of our scarce resources than yet another extension of unemployment," added Jon Kyl, another of the bill's co-sponsors. "Let's face it, once you've been out of work for 99 weeks, nobody is going to hire you. That's just the way it is. You reek of desperation, and that's something no sane employer wants to add to their payroll. It's much better to just accept your fate and hit the road."   "At first I was reluctant to support the HOBO act," said Olympia Snowe, "But then I realized I was just denying reality. This is training that can make life a little better for America's downtrodden. I have to ask myself, if I was homeless and on the road, would I know how to catch a critter in the woods and safely prepare it for consumption? Would I know how to hop aboard a moving freight train and make my way to a strawberry harvest? The answer is no, so I feel that the training this program provides can make a real difference in people's lives."   "The president broke the economy, and it's going to stay broken for a long time," said Mitch McConnell. "Even after we get our tax cuts it's going to be too little too late. The HOBO Act is an acknowledgement of that fact and a signal to the nation's many unemployed workers that it's time to just move on." The bill will now proceed to President Obama, who is expected to sign it at a ceremony outside of a freight yard outside of Quantico, Virginia.

Obama urged to get new metaphor

"So, Philly, it comes down to the metaphor of the economy as a car, which is a good way to visualize it, since the automotive industry is a vital component of our economy. Many of the Republicans who are running right now, these are the exact same folks who spent the last decade driving our economy into a ditch. Now you're probably saying to yourselves, how could they spend a whole decade driving the economy into a ditch? Good question. The short answer is that what they actually did was engage in reckless driving. Were they drunk? They might have had something in their Slurpees, that's for sure, because they were driving too fast, too hard, ignoring all the rules of the road. They would drive through yellow lights, ignore railroad crossings, and ride right along the edge of the ditch, so it was inevitable that sooner or later they would go in. And then one day in September of 2008, their luck ran out. They hit that ditch and crashed the living hell out of that car." - President Obama, 10/10/10 Attempting to gin up enthusiasm in the final two weeks before the mid-term  elections, President Obama address an energetic crowd of 18,000 at Fulton Park in Philadelphia. Media coverage of the event was minimal, consisting entirely of the story of the fat white streaker and the story of the paperback book tossed in Obama's general vicinity. "The streaker story was pretty interesting," says adviser David Axelrod, "but it hardly furthers the message the president is trying to get out. The book, well, maybe if it had been 'Mein Kampf' or a Koran that would have made the news cycle, but 'Love's Blazing Desire'? Please. What the president need most right now is a new metaphor." "And once we were elected, Joe and I, we put on our work boots - and these are Chippewa work boots, made right here in the USA -  and changed out of our suits and ties into something more appropriate, and we went down into that ditch. It was a good thing we put on those Chippewas because it was muddy and dusty down there and it stank. And we started pushing on that car to get it out of the ditch. Rocked it back and forth trying to get it free cause it was stuck pretty good no matter how hard we tried to push it. And then along came Joe Sestak, and he said, 'Hey Mister President, why don't I help Joe push it, and you get up front with a rope and pull it'.  And I said, thanks Joe, that's not a bad idea."    "Don't get me wrong," continues Axelrod. "The car in the ditch is a really good metaphor. The president came up with it himself, and everybody at the White House loved it. Hence the problem. Once the president finds a metaphor he likes, he wants to squeeze every last ounce of life out of it." "Every once in a while, we'd look up at the Republicans. They were up the hill, leaning on a white picket fence. They were the ones who had driven the car into the ditch, but they had gotten out and they were kind of taking a break, plotting ways to prevent us from calling a tow-truck. These guys were all fanning themselves and sipping on Slurpees, watching us do all the work. Mitch McConnell, as I recall, had a lemon-lime Slurpee, and wouldn't you just know it, John Boehner had an orange one, heh heh heh. Eric Cantor didn't have a Slurpee. He was drinking a Dr Pepper, cause he's a young gun.  They asked if we could turn the radio on, and we did, but they still weren't happy because we wouldn't turn it to the station that Rush was on. Every once in a while they'd say, why don't you push harder? You're not pushing the right way, Obama. But they didn't try to help. Boehner walked down to the car once. I thought he was going to help us but he just wanted to use the cigarette lighter. I had to ask him, 'John, don't you realize your lighting your Winston with the American economy?'" "See, every time he tells the story, it gets longer and more elaborate," explains Axelrod. "In the President's mind, it keeps getting better. Which it does, but that's beside the point. How's the media supposed to cover it at this point? We try to offer him new metaphors to try out, but it's a pride of ownership issue." "And after pushing and pushing over these last 20 months, finally we've got that car out of the ditch. What's left of it, anyway. I don't know what you're supposed to expect when the wheels fall off. It's going to need massive infrastructure work to get it back in good running shape, so it's a pretty good thing we saved the auto industry. Now I've got to be honest, the fuel lines are so messed up that I'm not sure how long it will still be able to run on gas, so we better be looking at a new fuel source. But the good news is that the motor still turns over. It's moving, it's capable of moving forward, but if you try to put it in reverse you're going to be looking at utter disaster..."   "Hey, I'm going to slip out for a quick cup of coffee. Want to join me?" asks Axelrod. "It's going to be another twenty minutes before the part where the Republicans ask for the keys back."