[benandhank.com]
Good morning, children. Feeling weary? Beaten down by bad news? You must be ready for a little Humpday Bailout Fun. Turns out there's a little gallows humor to be had among the steady drumbeat of depressing economic news. With the able-bodied guidance of my esteemed and estimable Newsweek colleague and dot-comrade Kathy Jones (all sing her name in praise!), I have trolled the Internets near and far to find for you, my little cuttlefish, LINKS! Pertaining to All Things Meltdown. So, read on, brave explorers. Go forth and click (that is, after you've read all of Newsweek's own fine coverage):
- First of all, is it me or does it already smell like Halloween spirit in here? Behold the horned Bernanke and Paulson masks. (Because you know everyone and her mother is going to be Sarah Palin for Halloween anyway -- show some originality, folks! Be devil-Fed people!)
- Speaking of pretending to be Henry Paulson (*shudder*), I suppose it was only a matter of time, but lookee here! There's a fake Henry Paulson Twitter stream. Sample tweet: "Came home after sleeping in office all week. My cat, Mr. Thrifty, looked at me eyes that said, 'You owe me 700 billion tummy rubs.'" Good stuff. (But. Sorry Fake Hank, my heart still belongs to Fake Sarah Palin, and will forever -- or until she vanishes into the stuff of historical political-oddity footnotes -- whichever comes first.)
- Americans! Listen here! Unregulated free market capitalism may be broken, but there is no crushing the entrepreneurial spirit! Bailout-themed t-shirts and worthless gewgaws are for sale by the bucketload at Cafe Press. A place for you to spend all that money you don't have anymore! Yay!
- This Dark Knight bailout parody is fairly genius (and it also reminds me of this recent brilliant Daily Show bit --you know, as opposed to all those un-brilliant Daily Show bits). Imagine asking the Joker for $700 billion. His reply: "And I thought my jokes were bad" ... funny because it's true. Also mind-bendingly depressing because it's true.
Dark Bailout:
- Oh, and speaking of mind-bendingly depressing, be sure to grab this line of code and embed it onto your blog: The National Debt Clock widget, ticking ever upwards on the race to $10 trillion. <-- Seriously, don't click on that if you value your sanity. (But first, don't think of an elephant.) UPDATE: Horrifyingly, it appears we have now passed the $10 trillion mark. Oy.
- Another number that's steadily, ineluctably, unavoidably trudging upwards? That would be the number of failed banks. Thanks for that, Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter.
- OK, fine. The crumbling of our economic infrastructure as if it was so many stale stale sugar cookies is a serious matter. Fortunately, there are more seriouser people than I who are working hard to figure out what to make of it all: The Calculated Risk blog has up-to-the-minute news, analysis and projections -- maintained by "a senior executive, retired from a public company, with a background in investing, finance and economics." Sounds credibly fancy! Particularly chilling is this post examining Personal Consumption Expenditures (in normal-people words: "consumer spending," which may well see its first quarterly decline since the fourth quarter of 1991). "This is strong evidence that the indefatigable U.S. consumer is finally throwing in the towel," he writes, as I stash my precious, precious pennies into my horned Hank Paulson fright mask under the mattress of my bed in my house, the mortgage on which I recently defaulted.
- Speaking of which! The housing bubble blog. Ooof.
- Finally, if you haven't already actively been using this for all your old Winger cassingles, check out Buy My S---pile, Henry! -- because you too have a heaps o' regretable purchases you'd like Uncle Sam to take off your tired, caloused hands. From the site:
With our economy in crisis, the US Government is scrambling to rescue our banks by purchasing their "distressed assets", i.e., assets that no one else wants to buy from them. We figured that instead of protesting this plan, we'd give regular Americans the same opportunity to sell their bad assets to the government. We need your help and you need the Government's help!
Use the form below to submit bad assets you'd like the government to take off your hands. And remember, when estimating the value of your 1997 limited edition Hanson single CD "MMMbop", it's not what you can sell these items for that matters, it's what you think they are worth. The fact that you think they are worth more than anyone will buy them for is what makes them bad assets.
Now. Ready for some good news? Here is precious little some!
- Not all millionaires are scumbags! No, really. Take this quiz and see how even you misunderestimate these poor (and increasingly poorer) creatures. Then target your rage at CEO billionaires. Seriously. Screw them!
- Lastly, don't just sit here reading my stupid blog of stupidity. Tell Congress what you think of this mess. GO! NOW!
