Your Guide to the American Economic Recession

The man who paid the cost to be the boss is Ben Bernanke, the King of the Federal Reserve. Let me tell you about this guy. This Bernanke is watched like a hawk and anything he says or does can influence the market in wild ways.

There is nothing you can say in a political cartoon that you can't say in an unreadable 1,000+ word front page update.If Bernanke takes a dump in the morning and it smells a little worse than usual and has peanuts in it, the DOW will drop 300 points in a day. If his dump clogs the toilet and he has to grab a fork to break it up so it'll go down the toilet the S&P 500 might land on the whammy spot. If Bernanke emerges from his nest and sees his shadow we might have eight more weeks of winter. Who the hell knows?

I make sure to watch all the financial channels like CNBC and Bloomberg so I know what's going on, during the commercials of Scooby Doo and Small Wonder of course. One thing I'm sick of is all the hyperbole spewed about this massive, devastating recession that will end civilization as we know it. "IT WAS A BLOODY DAY ON WALL ST. TODAY", I heard on one channel. You'd think they were holding cockfights in there or something.

I watch this show called Jim Cramer's Mad Money, the finance guy who is infinitely smarter than every other finance guy because he had the good sense to develop a gimmick, always give financial advice as if you're my dad. I swear to God I can't watch that show sometimes because I feel like he's going to jump out of the screen and slap the shit out of me and I get flashbacks to when I was a kid and I start seizuring in front of the television.

But anyway, Jim Cramer is so good at trading that they don't let him own stock. He has pretty much figured out the stock market. He's like that guy from Press Your Luck who figured out the sequence of the board and if he were allowed to trade he would singlehandedly bankrupt the country. At least that's what my friend Jimmy tells me. His dad is an economist and doesn't let me come over his house when he's home but I go over there anyway. His dad hates Jim Cramer and wants to beat him up so bad haha.

There are several factors that could/have caused a recession, but it's mostly this subprime lending thing. Basically it went like this based on what I could piece together from Wikipedia and The Sonic the Hedgehog Erotic Fan Fiction Zone.

Home Buyer: So you're saying I can own a home?
Mortgage Guy: Well, yes, but the rate can go up at any time so-
Home Buyer: HEY FRANCINE, WHERE YOU THINK WE SHOULD PUT THE PLASMA TV???

But it's kind of hard to lecture people while they are being evicted, so much of the blame falls on lenders with predatory business practices. I mean, yeah, they're predators, but that's their job. And it's not like these people couldn't read the fine print on the toilet.