Guest Post: Bernanke Pledges To Screw Your Grandmother For At Least Two More Years

Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform

Bernanke Pledges To Screw Your Grandmother For At Least Two More Years

“A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.” - Ron Paul

  

I wonder what goes through Ben Bernanke’s mind as he sits in his gold plated boardroom in the majestic Marriner Eccles building in Washington DC and decides to screw grandmothers in order to further enrich Wall Street bankers. He just pledged to keep interest rates at zero percent for two more years. Ben is a supposedly book smart man. Does he have no guilt or shame for what he has wrought? How does he sleep at night knowing he has created bloody revolutions around the globe due to his inflationary zero interest policy? People are dying because he has decided that an elite group of Wall Street bankers who recklessly brought down the worldwide financial system in 2008 deserve to be kept alive and enriched at the expense of the many.

He uses words like transitory to describe inflation. Even as the price of gold reveals his lies he continues to promote policies that will lead to the demise of the USD and our economic system. There is only one way to counter his lies – truth. With a corporate fascist government run by the few for the benefit of the few, telling the truth is treason as stated by Ron Paul:

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”

The storyline being sold to you by Bernanke, his Wall Street masters, and their captured puppets in Washington DC is that deflation is the great bogeyman they must slay. They make these statements from their ivory jewel encrusted towers as the real people in the real world deal with reality. The reality since Ben Bernanke announced his QE2 policy in August 2010 is:

• Unleaded gas prices are up 45%.
• Heating oil prices are up 46%.
• Corn prices are up 71%.
• Soybean prices are up 26%.
• Rice prices are up 13%.
• Pork prices are up 31%.
• Beef prices are up 25%.
• Coffee prices are up 38%.
• Sugar prices are up 48%.
• Cotton prices are up 13%.
• Gold prices are up 42%.
• Silver prices are up 115%.
• Copper prices are up 23%.

These are the facts and they fly in the face of the lies being spouted by Bernanke and his Federal Reserve cronies. Words like transitory, quantitative easing, extended period, and liquidity are used by Professor Bernanke to obscure what he is doing to the average American. He lives in a world of theories and models, while the rest of us live in the real world, where theories kill and impoverish millions. There are 40 million Americans over the age of 65 today. You might even know a few of them. There will be 10,000 people per day joining their ranks for the next nineteen years as the Baby Boomers retire en masse. The vast majority of these senior citizens are risk averse. Some disturbing facts reveal the true picture for seniors today:

• Most senior citizens do not have a traditional pension plan because they have been going out of style over the past 30 years.  In 1980, some 39% of private-sector workers had a pension that guaranteed a steady payout during retirement. Today that number stands closer to 15%, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C. 
• 35% of Americans already over the age of 65 rely almost entirely on Social Security payments alone. 
• Approximately 3 out of 4 Americans start claiming Social Security benefits the moment they are eligible at age 62.  Most are doing this out of necessity. This probably has something to do with the fact that the median retirement savings of households over the age of 65 is less than $45,000.   
• The median household net worth of all Americans fell from $97,000 in 2005 to $70,000 in 2009. The median household net worth of households over 65 years old fell from $200,000 in 2005 to approximately $150,000 in 2009. Two thirds of seniors’ net worth is the equity in their primary residence, meaning they have $50,000 or less of financial assets (cash, stocks, bonds). 
• 20% of all the households in the United States have zero or negative net worth.  

 

This data sets the scene for the crime of the century committed by Ben Bernanke and his co-conspirators on the Federal Reserve Board. The easiest way to understand how Ben has screwed seniors and savers to pay off his Wall Street and K Street benefactors is to use a real life example.

A seventy five year old widow living in her paid off row home, bought in 1955, gets by on her annual social security income of $17,000 and the income generated from the $125,000 in retirement savings left from her husband’s forty years working as a truck driver. She is a child of the Depression, financially unsophisticated and risk averse. This describes most senior citizens. The widow and her late husband were only comfortable investing their money in CDs and money market funds. In 2007, before the Wall Street created financial collapse, savers and risk averse senior citizens could earn 5% in a money market fund, 5.5% in a 2 year CD and 6% in a 5 year CD. The widow could supplement her meager social security income with an additional $6,000 of interest income. This money was used to pay the ever increasing real estate taxes, medical insurance premiums, upkeep on the old house, and necessities like food, fuel, insurance and heating.

Fast forward four years to 2011. Savers and seniors are getting average interest rates on 6-month CDs this week of 0.58% nationwide, according to Bankrate.com. Rates on one-year CDs fell this week to 0.86%, while 5- year CDs fetched 2.04%. Money market funds are paying a pitiful 0.16% on average. The widow that was able to generate a risk free $6,000 only four years ago has only been able to generate less than $500 per year for the last three years. In addition, the government manipulated CPI, as calculated by the drones at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was used to deny senior citizens an increase in their Social Security payments for the last two years. Meanwhile, the prices of food, fuel, clothing, insurance, medical care, and local taxes have been skyrocketing due to Federal Reserve created inflation. Do you think the number of Americans on food stamps surging from 26.3 million in 2007 to 45.8 million today has anything to do with Bernanke’s zero interest rate, inflationary policies?

 

This is not a theoretical hypothesis. Ben Bernanke has purposely sacrificed the savers and seniors in this country at the satanic altar of his Wall Street high priests of debt. According to the BEA data on personal income, in the 3^rd quarter of 2008 savers and seniors were able to earn $1.42 trillion of interest income. By the 3^rd quarter of 2010 these same people were only able to earn $984 billion of interest income due to Ben Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy. Make no mistake about it, the $436 billion difference was taken out of the pockets of senior citizens and Americans trying to save for their futures and deposited into the accounts of the mega-Wall Street banks that destroyed our financial system with their reckless greed induced debt toga party. The beneficiaries of zero interest rates, QE1, QE2, and all future QEs are Wall Street bankers and heavily indebted entities – namely our profligate Federal Government, who make drunken sailors, seem fiscally responsible. The victims of zero interest rates and quantitative easing are savers and risk averse senior citizens as their income has plummeted and inflation has ravaged their everyday existence. Meanwhile, the Wall Street fat cats have paid themselves over $70 billion in bonuses since 2008.

The fantasy world of moderate inflation is a myth created by the Federal Reserve in conjunction with the government bureaucrats in Washington DC. These people have tortured the CPI calculation worse than a Muslim being water boarded at Guantanamo Bay. Alan Greenspan, bubble blower extraordinaire, began the process of systematically screwing grandmothers in the 1980s. As a way to hide and obscure the true level of inflation caused by running endless deficits supporting a welfare/warfare empire, Greenspan and Clinton implemented devious adjustments to the CPI in order to screw senior citizens and allow Big Government to get bigger while stealthily impoverishing the middle class. One man has pulled back the curtain on the Wizards of Inflation to reveal the truth. John Williams at www.shadowstats.com publishes the true rate of inflation as measured in 1980, prior to the fraudulent manipulation of the CPI. The reality is that inflation has not dropped below 5% since 1987 and currently exceeds 10%. 

      

John Williams described the Greenspan/Clinton conspiracy to defraud Americans:

“The Greenspan argument was that when steak got too expensive, the consumer would substitute hamburger for the steak, and that the inflation measure should reflect the costs tied to buying hamburger versus steak, instead of steak versus steak. Of course, replacing hamburger for steak in the calculations would reduce the inflation rate, but it represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a declining standard of living. Cost of living was being replaced by the cost of survival. The old system told you how much you had to increase your income in order to keep buying steak. The new system promised you hamburger, and then dog food, perhaps, after that. Over a period of several years, straight arithmetic weighting of the CPI components was shifted to a geometric weighting. The Greenspan benefit of a geometric weighting was that it automatically gave a lower weighting to CPI components that were rising in price, and a higher weighting to those items dropping in price.” 

Now we hear the latest bipartisan plan to “save” Social Security is to alter the CPI again and further defraud Americans by pretending inflation does not exist. Why address a problem when you can obfuscate, misinform and lie? Anyone with critical thinking skills can clearly see that since 2007 real inflation for our widow has ranged between 5% and 10%, while her subsistence level income has been slashed by 26% due to Ben Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy. The good news is our widow will have the peace of mind knowing the price of steak and hamburger hasn’t really risen as she decides on whether to dine on dog food or cat food tonight.   

 

“Government spending is always a “tax” burden on the American people and is never equally or fairly distributed. The poor and low-middle income workers always suffer the most from the deceitful tax of inflation and borrowing.” – Ron Paul

The Road to Impoverishment & Authoritarianism

There is a direct connection between Federal Reserve policies and the impoverishment of the middle class and seniors. The average American does not appreciate the disastrous consequences of deficit spending and currency devaluation by the Federal Reserve. Ron Paul has been sounding the warning for over a decade, but no one has been listening:

“The greatest threat facing America today is the disastrous fiscal policies of our own government, marked by shameless deficit spending and Federal Reserve currency devaluation. It is this one-two punch– Congress spending more than it can tax or borrow, and the Fed printing money to make up the difference– that threatens to impoverish us by further destroying the value of our dollars.”

It is no longer a threat. It is reality. The chart below tells the story.  

 

The Federal Funds rate was 6.5% when George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2000. The economy was booming, unemployment was 4.2%, the country was running fiscal surpluses, and the National Debt stood at $5.7 trillion. Alan Greenspan was the Federal Reserve Chairman and had been in that position since 1987. The Federal Funds Rate averaged 5.25% from 1990 through 2000 as the country grew strongly and America came the closest to full employment in its history. In 2001 Greenspan set in motion the creation of a tsunami of debt that swept over the entire country in 2008. The short shallow 2001 recession convinced Greenspan to reduce rates to 1% and keep them below 3% until the middle of 2005. He did this with the full support of his right hand man at the Fed – Ben Bernanke.

“The failure of Chairman Greenspan and other FOMC members to address the fiscal and monetary problems of the United States during his almost two decades at the Fed has left the United States on a trajectory for economic stagnation, hyperinflation, and the attendant political and social costs of such policies.” – Chris Whalen - Inflated – How Money & Debt Built the American Dream 

Greenspan kept interest rates excessively low three years into an economic recovery, creating the largest bubble in world history. He handed the inflation baton to Bernanke in February 2006 and Ben has been sprinting at top speed for the last five years printing money faster than a Japanese bullet train. With a true rate of inflation running between 5% and 10% during the 2000 through 2011 time frame, market driven interest rates should have been in that same range. But Alan and Ben have kept the Federal Funds rate at an average level of 2.25% over this period. The result has been a consumer debt bubble, housing bubble and now a government debt bubble. Instead of accepting the consequences of excessive liquidity, excessive debt and mal-investment by the Wall Street banks and liquidating the toxic poison from our economic system with the resulting economic depression and losses borne by the stockholders and bondholders of the criminal Wall Street enterprises, Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner chose to sacrifice the American taxpayer, savers, and seniors to keep their Wall Street masters in their NYC penthouses and Hamptons estates.

 

The shrieking liberal left blames capitalism and demands more social welfare benefits for their entitled constituents. The fact is we have not had true capitalism in this country since 1913.

“Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.” – Ron Paul

The Day the Dollar Died – August 15, 1971

“With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.” - F.A. von Hayak 

“The road paved with inflation and debt is also the road to authoritarianism.” – Chris Whalen - Inflated – How Money & Debt Built the American Dream 

 

On August 15, 1971, exactly forty years ago this week, Richard Nixon closed the gold window and removed the last vestiges of restraint on politicians and central bankers. Politicians were free to make promises that couldn’t be kept to buy votes and central bankers were free to print fiat dollars and create inflation to support an ever growing warfare/welfare state. On that date the non-manipulated CPI was 40.8. Today, forty years later, the highly manipulated CPI is 225.7, a 553% increase. In reality, true inflation has risen more than 700% since August 1971. Some other facts put this relentless inflation into perspective:

• GDP has ascended from $1.1 trillion to $15.0 trillion today, a 1,364% increase in forty years.
• The National Debt has risen from $400 billion to $14.5 billion, a 3,625% increase in forty years.
• Total wage income has grown from $588 billion to $6.627 trillion today, a 1,127% increase in forty years.
• Consumer credit outstanding has accumulated from $141 billion to $2.446 trillion today, a 1,735% increase in forty years.
• War spending has increased from $95 billion to $966 billion today, a 1,017% increase in forty years. The U.S. was in the midst of the Vietnam War in 1971.
• Social welfare transfers from the Federal government for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans, and Unemployment increased from $87 billion to $2.305 trillion today, a 2,649% increase in forty years.

These facts prove how twisted and warped our economic system and society have become. Real wages are lower than they were in 1971 as families were forced to put two parents into the workforce forcing children to be raised by strangers, with the resultant social consequences. The corporate media, financial industrial complex and housing industrial complex convinced Americans they had to keep up with the Joneses with new luxury automobiles, extravagant McMansions, and the expensive accoutrements that went along with these representations of fake wealth. The financial plundering of the country by the peddlers of debt on Wall Street could not have happened without the easy money, no regulation policies of the Federal Reserve for the last decade. The National Debt is increasing at a rate of 10% per year while GDP is increasing at a rate of less than 2% per year. Anyone with even the most basic math skills can see this train is going to go off the tracks. Our spending on social welfare benefits has grown at a rate twice as high as our GDP growth for the last forty years and the establishment in Washington has no resolve to address these un-payable promises. The liberals squealed like stuck pigs over the horrific non-cuts in the recent joke debt ceiling compromise. The neo-cons who control the Republican agenda think $1 trillion per year for their war machine is far too little and endangers our very existence. Consumers refuse to accept the reality of their precarious existence balanced on the edge of their 13 credit cards.

Americans of all parties, ages, races, persuasions, education and beliefs have shirked their civic and moral responsibility to future generations. The rampant greed on Wall Street, corruption in Washington DC, shallowness of the American people and cowardice of all in not accepting responsibility for their actions will lead to the end of this country as we know it. There is no courage among the political class in Washington DC to truly take the steps required to save this country from the most predictable cataclysm in history. The politicians and citizens they represent have decided to delegate their civic responsibility to Ben Bernanke. He has tripled the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet by acquiring the toxic mortgage “assets” of the Wall Street banks and buying $600 billion of U.S. Treasuries. The Federal Funds Rate is .07%. His announcement of zero interest rates for two more years proves he has run out of theories and ammo. Jim Rickards, in 2010, pointed out the danger in Bernanke’s reckless policies:

“Fed Chairman Bernanke wakes up every morning and tries to trash the dollar with quantitative easing, zero interest rates and swap lines with the central banks. But it has not been working. The Fed has never taken it to the next step and asked what happens when quantitative easing does not work.”

The utter failure of QE2, hollow Congressional spending “cuts” that will keep the National Debt on track towards $23 trillion by 2021, S&P downgrade and recent plunge in the stock market are the first cracks in the façade of the great American Empire. We have entered a period of institutional crisis and this fiscal spiral will lead us further into the clutches of a more centralized authoritarian form of government unless the people stand up to the junta of mercantilist oligarchs that control this country. Do we want to relinquish our remaining freedoms and liberties for the cloak of corporate fascist authoritarian central planning disguised as safety and security? The Romans chose security over freedom. The time has come to make a choice about what we will become. Ben Franklin stated the obvious two centuries ago:

 Those who would give up Essential Liberty
to purchase a little Temporary Safety,
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

- Ben Franklin

Comments

[Diogenes]

A long time ago governments cared for their citizens and acted to protect them. After the Great Depression and WW2 there were a lot of programs to help veterans and the poor that worked, also laws to prevent ripoffs by the rich and giant corporations and taxes to pay for it all, well most of it.

That was all thrown away in the 90s. It is a new, cruel world out there. The PTB have done everything in their power to rig the system in their favor, rob the public, AND cover it up and bullshit it away.

It is no wonder that those whose ideas were formed 50 years ago or more, cannot believe how corrupt the world has become. I can hardly believe it myself and I have been a cynic for 40 years.

[Rbh110]

A lot of Grandmas have already received about 100X out of SS than they put in (even factoring in for a 3-5% ror on the money they put in 40 years ago).

I live my daily life (and base my financial strategy upon) assuming that when I retire I will get $0 from the US Govt (or what small amount I get wont be worth anything in real purchasing power).

I tell my kids "don't depend on the govt to take care of you - do what you have to do to survive and don't depend on others to take care of you. Me and your mom will be here for you, but beyond that - you need to be self sufficient"

[WhoMe]

How can a man who has been so wrong on 2 of the largest economic calls of the last several decades still be in power? Bernake said there was no housing bubble back in 2005 only to see housing collapse and he also stated back in 2007 that the US would not go into a recession only to see the worst recession since the Great Depression take place. HOW CAN THIS MAN STILL BE IN POWER?????

The answer is some group that is pulling the strings behind the scenes wants him in power. Everyone should have taken the hint when a newly elected Obama who ran an entire campaign about change put the exact same economic leaders that were under the Bush administration into his administration. That's not change, that's a screaming red flag!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INmqvibv4UU&feature=player_embedded

[Milton Waddams]

How is he in power?  In 2003/4, as a mere Fed board member, he laid out the blueprint (search for 'monetary policy at the zero bound') which more or less said that in the event of a deflationary scare the Fed would defend the banking sector at all costs by continually pumping printing press money into it.  'The smartest guys in the room' took the hint and pushed the economy toward the brink ( employing massive leverage under the assumption that, were it to all blow up and set off a debt-lead deflationary depression, it would end as: heads I win, tails you lose).  In the meantime, the expert on the Fed's mistakes during the Great Depression, was tapped as Fed Chairman a year or so before the onset of the 'Kinda-Great Depression'.  He did, and is doing, exactly what he said he would in 2003/4.  Why did so many of the high profile hedge fund clowns that made bails of cash on the ruin of America run into the bailout babies post crisis?  A sort of 'pay back' in an effort to thwart the arguments of regulators and investigators.  'Hey this guy made a billion betting against the American dream; yeah, but he also put money behind the government's efforts to prop-up the entities afterwards... so he's balanced it out'

[ToNYC]

It's really very east to see if you accept the fact that Obama was a False Flag operation after Jan 20, 2009.

[espi]

When TSHTF in the States, it will be very different than what happened in London.  My local gun shop used to be nothing more than a sporting goods store, with hunting rifles and shotguns, and a couple dozen handguns.  Half of their inventory is now home-defense, or tactical weapons.  When the thugs started rioting at the Wisconsin State Fair, everyone was lucky that it was a Thursday night (opening night).  Had it happened on any Friday/Saturday night, a lot of us country folks would have been in attendance.  All it would have taken is one cowboy feeling cornered, with an impulse to protect his family.

[trav7777]

and then you'd have been pilloried all over the media as a RAYCISS gun nut who hates black people.

these were just "youths", ok?  And I see that "flash mobs" mean a bunch of happy white people meeting to do a dance routine.

The SDHTF in London...blacks hit the fan.  Like Katrina or LA, Detroit, Watts.

[Perpetual Burn]

They will never learn and never care.

[casaananda]

O yeah, about 81 our our dear Congresspeople are going to Israel, courtesy of AIPAC, to hear a lot of hogwash about how wonderful Israel is and why the gov must give it billions every year. Well, I have been there and I know: it's a shitty place full of racists and warmongers. The reps ought to be out in their districts listening to the people, but they'd rather go on a sort of holiday in Israel.

[newworldorder]

What did you expext our Congress criters to do? After all they must be fed. AIPAC is taking names and counting them twice.

If the US government did not give a hoot about what happened to the USS Liberty, do you expect our current Congresional members to care?

Watch them crow and worship the feet of the great Israili politicians.

[Bob]

If they were still there on Saturday, they saw 300,000 people protesting in the streets of Tel Aviv against severe biflation and deepening income disparity. 

[dwdollar]

Meanwhile...  Grandma's grandkids are paying 10% on $30,000 worth of student loans with their McJob.  "Go to school and make something of yourself", she told them.  Hah!!!  Good advice grandma.

[Don Keot]

Ever wonder how many of the kids graduating have ever even had a job?  72% have never had a job.  Just because you can get student loans, doesn't mean you should.  You will find that in real life as well.

[static]

absolutely the truth....and the forcing of the prudent (risk averse) people to chase yield in the light of ZIRP in order to prop up the stinkin casino of equities, reeks of the putrid stench of Moral Hazzard...Sickening

[baby_BLYTHE]

He didn't get his nickmame Benocide for no reason. The man is hell bent on destroying the savings of every man, woman and child in this nation and killing emergining markets with run-away inflation.

He must pour blood & semen on his Wheaties in the morning before sitting at his throne on the FOMC 

[trav7777]

you jackasses will soon learn that FRNs are not to be confused with savings

[baby_BLYTHE]

When crude breaks $200/gallon. It will be time to Bury yer Fuckin' Dead!

[Vic Vinegar]

Zero Hedge is the greatest website in the world.  The person who started this site is a genuine hero and everyone who contributes to this thing should be commended.  But for fuck's sake, a comment like yours above this is such bullshit it defies belief one could make it:

"The man is hell bent on destroying the savings of every man, woman and child in this nation and killing emergining markets with run-away inflation."

Really blythe?  That's what fires up Benocide in the morning?  Since there are no junks or reds, you get a Katy Perry video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTHNpusq654&ob=av2n

[baby_BLYTHE]

Katy Perry? ROFL!

Would rather watch that Barney Frank farting video on loop for an hour, no thanks.

[Vic Vinegar]

Why not do both?  Life can be complicated if you make it that way...

[Vic Vinegar]

BB,

I gotta roll soon so I just want to say this in all sincerity (believe you me, it's hard to be sincere on a website that specializes in commenters who try to top each other in terms of perma-doomerism or proving how "smart" they are) - you are my friend and I wish for nothing but the best for you.  You have a great mind and the world is a much better place with you in it.  

Live the Golden Rule, BB.

Best,

VV

[Vic Vinegar]

BTW, my comment above stands but your Wheaties riff was good shit...

[choorles]

Max Keiser:  “This is a form of financial oppression, and I would go so far as to call it financial apartheid. If you are part of the elite you get to borrow money at -2%, if you are borrowing money on a credit card you are borrowing money at 35% or 40% or higher, guaranteed to impoverish you … They are creating, through financial apartheid, a financial underclass. Keeping interest rates at 0% is the key. They are getting away with incredible fraud and confiscation of wealth and plunder."

www.silverrevolucion.com

[Bob]

Surprise!  The more the merrier, I guess . . . until it ain't. 

[Seasmoke]

i tell you, these motherfuckers better start watching out for some senior citizens who have been told they only have a few weeks left to live.......its only go to take a few who have nothing to lose before the copycats start multiplying !

[uOptOut]

"seventy five year old widow living in her paid off row home, bought in 1955"

Two words: reverse mortgage, bitchez

There, just doubled granny's disposable income and pooched the kids.

Hit the casino, grandma!

[Don Keot]

I think the reverse mortgage is one of the worst documents to be invented.  The fees are ridiculous and they also require mortgage insurance.  I think I will just keep all I have paid in full.  When I die the kids can write me a check for it.  As for above.  Just think, you could have bought a new Porsche with the inheritance if it wasn't for that selfish old grandma. 

[toady]

I read some stuff about reverse mortgages a few years back and you are correct.

I don't know why I assumed reverse mortgage = morgage in reverse, but it simply isnt true. The bank\entity you work with does not pay you principle and interest. Say you get $1k a month. After the fees and INTEREST THAT YOU PAY FOR THEM you end up with 5 to 6 hundred.

If somebody is going to buy my property its 30 years principle AND interest, fees in advance, or cash.

[caerus]

florida woman discovered mummified in car

[Juan Wild]

The Mr. Ben Song

You're a mean one, Mr. Ben.
You really are a heel.
You're as cuddly as a cactus,
You're as charming as an eel.
Mr. Ben.

You're a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.

You're a monster, Mr. Ben.
Your heart's an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders,
You've got garlic in your soul.
Mr. Ben.

I wouldn't touch you, with a
thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.

You're a vile one, Mr. Ben.
You have termites in your smile.
You have all the tender sweetness
Of a seasick crocodile.
Mr. Ben.

Given the choice between the two of you
I'd take the seasick crockodile.

You're a foul one, Mr. Ben.
You're a nasty, wasty skunk.
Your heart is full of unwashed socks
Your soul is full of gunk.
Mr. Ben.

The three words that best describe you, are as follows, and I quote:

"STINK, STANK, STUNK!!"

You're a rotter, Mr. Ben.
You're the king of sinful sots.
Your heart's a dead tomato splotched
With moldy purple spots,
Mr. Ben.

Your soul is an apalling dump heap overflowing
with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable
rubbish imaginable,
Mangled up in tangled up knots.

You nauseate me, Mr. Ben.
With a nauseaus super-naus.
You're a crooked jerky jockey
And you drive a crooked hoss.
Mr. Ben.

You're a three decker saurkraut and toadstool sandwich
With arsenic sauce!
Mr. Ben......Bernanke!!

[Freewheelin Franklin]

Stolen!

[Bansters-in-my-...]

Ben is just the puppet for the Rothschilds clan.

[Albertarocks]

That bastard is not only screwing our grandmothers but is screwing our grandchildren just as hard.  And after screwing the grandmothers he won't even have the common decency to bury them, or in some cases, "re-bury" them.

[VegasBob]

In a world where sanity prevailed, Bernokio would be indicted for an assortment of crimes, including fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, grand theft, and possibly treason.

After a trial, any jury of sane people would convict Bernokio of all the above crimes, and sentence him to hang by the neck until dead.

[killben]

Does he have no guilt or shame for what he has wrought?

NONE .. WHATSOEVER .. HOW DO YOU SPELL SHAME AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

How does he sleep at night knowing he has created bloody revolutions around the globe due to his inflationary zero interest policy?

VERY WELL, THANK YOU! AFTER ALL HIS DEFINITION OF EARNING A GOOD NIGHTS SLEEP IS BASICALLY IS HOW WELL HE HAS SCREWED SAVERS, TAX-PAYERS AND RETIREES AND HOW WELL HE HAS SERVED HIS TRUE MASTERS .. HE TOPS THE CLASS IN THAT RESPECT. NO ONE CAN DO BETTER!

[zebra]

it is quite apparent that your grandma didn't pay Ben more than the banksters did.

[Troy Ounce]

What's the problem? The US of A has been kicking the weak and handicapped for 200 years in the nuts. It has been built on "survival of the fittest" as if you are poor YOU CHOSE TO BE POOR, remember? You're proud of your meritocracy, no? Now stop complaining and SUFFER, because you want it!

[RiverRoad]

Happy 40th Freakin' Fiat.

[michigan independant]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZtx0reJdG4&feature=related

You voted, you pay. I care for my Mother in law 84 years old. Wife stays home now. We get by, family first 

Wake up people. Works until they run out your money. Federal Budgets based on infinite growth are insane.

Vote sanity. Both party's do not care. Wake up.

Defend your future. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqnMrynpq9U&feature=related

[Freewheelin Franklin]

Bernanke Pledges To Screw Your Grandmother For At Least Two More Years

My Grandmother could use a little action. I don't think she's been getting much since my Grandfather died.

[Hobbleknee]

Bernanke Pledges To Screw Your Grandmother For At Least Two More Years

Not if Krugman kills them first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDnvmOQDkkw&t=1m15s

[nathan1234]

Since when did Ben find a conscience!

He just does his duty to his owners.

He would screw his own grandmother if she were alive too.

[DrunkenMonkey]

Chuck D was right. The (Ron Paul inspired) revolution will not be televised because it is not in the corporate media's interest to do so.

[docj]

Jim, you're otherwise brilliant article is somewhat tarnished by the following...

The Federal Funds rate was 6.5% when George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2000. The economy was booming, unemployment was 4.2%, the country was running fiscal surpluses, and the National Debt stood at $5.7 trillion.

You assert 6 things here, half of which are flat-out wrong. Fist is the easy one, Dubya "assumed the presidency" in January 2001. Second, far from "booming" the economy in late-2000/early-2001 was in the toilet after the implosion of the Dot.Com bubble. Finally, the country ran a single year of fiscal surplus on the order of 0.2% of revenues in fiscal 2001 fueled almost entirely from the cap-gains taxes from said dot.com bubble; the previous 2-3 years of "surplus" were all excess SS taxes confiscated to make the "on-budget" balance look like a surplus.

I have no idea why you feel you need to shade these facts as the truth really doesn't degrade your main points one bit (except perhaps to take ever so little of the load off Ben Shalom and transfer it to his mentor, Sir Alan).

[Jim Quinn]

Bush won the election in November 2000. All the figures are correct. An economy with a 4.2% unemployment rate is a healthy economy.

[Waterfallsparkles]

Bernanke has sacrificed all Americans, on the Alter,  at the Temple of the Wealthy and the Bankers.

[Mongrel]

Why are these criminals still walking around free? Why do we pledge our allegiance to this organized criminal enterprise known as the US government? Why do we continue to serve as its eyes and ears, hands and feet? Why don't we instread withdraw our consent? Why don't the historic regions of America simply tell DC to go to hell and secede from this decrepit imperial union? See www.dixienet.org for solutions.

[El Viejo]

This is why they will 'attempt' a different QE this time.

[PiratePiggy]

Enjoy the Slinding Dollar Slide at the Ron Paul Prosperity Playground in Ames, Iowa least weekend.