Further details on SuperBen’s plans:

Bernanke, despite utterly DENYING journalists everywhere the ability to slap a “BERNANKE: US IS IN RECESSION” headline on their coverage of this morning’s speech, was kind enough to admit that the US economy will run “below its longer-run potential” in the next few quarters, and to suggest extensive government intervention:

WASHINGTON — U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Monday threw his support behind a second round of fiscal stimulus by the government to limit the risk of a “protracted” slowdown in the economy.

“With the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by the Congress at this juncture seems appropriate,” Mr. Bernanke said in prepared remarks to the House Budget Committee.

Mr. Bernanke offered many caveats, however. Any stimulus should be “well-targeted,” he said, and focused on ways to “help improve access to credit by consumers, homebuyers, businesses, and other borrowers.”

Other proposals included delivering an electroshock to any banker who denied a consumer’s request for an auto loan, the signing of the “No CDO Left Behind Act” to ensure that no bad asset was left on the books of any of the country’s nine largest banks, and something about how if Janet Yellen lost the bet she made with him about whether or not the US was really in recession she had to bake him a pie. OK, maybe not, but I tuned out for a while there.