Helicopter Ben, He Is Our Hero Of The Sky

Helicopter Ben apparently wants more money to throw out of his Helicopter Ben Helicopter! That's his superpower, you see.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said policy makers may need to expand aid to the banking system beyond the $700 billion already approved and take other aggressive measures even at the cost of soaring fiscal deficits.

“Without a reasonable degree of financial stability, a sustainable recovery will not occur,” the Fed chairman said today in testimony prepared for the Senate Budget Committee. “Although progress has been made on the financial front since last fall, more needs to be done.”

Bernanke’s comments suggest he sees a role for bigger federal outlays as the Obama administration seeks congressional approval for a budget of $3.55 trillion for the fiscal year beginning in October. President Barack Obama has already signed into a law a $787 billion economic stimulus package of tax cuts and government spending.

Obama’s first budget seeks standby authority for as much as $750 billion in new aid to the financial industry. Whether those funds will be needed “depends on the results of the current supervisory assessment of banks” and the evolution of the economy, Bernanke said.

Bernanke said policy makers would have “preferred to avoid” what is likely to be the largest ratio of federal debt compared with gross domestic product since the end of World War II, and he urged lawmakers not to lose sight of fiscal discipline.

Up in the sky above Wall Street! It's Helicopter Ben, and his faithful sidekick Timmy The Invisible Boy!

In a rare outing in public, he's on Capitol Hill today, and we learn from the WSJ that

No decision has been made on the final structure of what the administration is calling a private-public financing partnership, but one leading idea is to establish separate funds to be run by private investment managers. The managers would have to put up a certain amount of capital. Additional financing would come from the government, which would share in any profit or loss.

The Dow is cratering; they've had months to come up with a plan, but they're still having a seminar. The gist of Noam Scheiber's piece on the Treasury Department is that they're too scared to seize the banks temporarily for political reasons, and too skittish to run the banks even for a short period of time. But staggering on for years slowly bleeding money to the banks ... that's just political heaven, isn't it?

But...he has a helicopter and the other guy's invisible! Clearly we have the right superheroes for the job. After all, Really Really Competent Man and Power Of Attorney, Attorney At Law are busy saving school buses full of nuns or something.

New tags for these idiots. Too scared/lazy/stupid to do the right thing, but they're perfectly OK to see the Dow die a death of 1000 cuts.