Ben Bernanke has a lot of stuff on his mind. Between telling Congress to “stop spending more money than we have – just not right now” and playing the role of AIG’s cheerleader in front of the US house, we have always just assumed he finds time to run the printing press, even though that should be the Bureau of Engraving and Printing’s job, and Taco Bell has made the same assumption:

After the financial crisis, we fully expected the Federal Reserve to draw more mainstream public attention. But a Taco Bell marketing ploy isn’t among the first things we would’ve predicted.

“Dear Governors of the Federal Reserve” is how the fast food joint started its tongue-in-cheek (we hope) full-page newspaper ad today to promote its new $2 meal deals. As part of the stunt, the home of the “Beefy 5-Layer Burrito” asked the Fed to circulate more $2 bills “to meet the pending demand.” It even started a Facebook petition, with prizes for signing up.

Taco Bell goes on to iterate that with bills being printed according to demand, $2 is the loneliest number, with the plurality of the bills probably hoarded in the bottom of one of your grandmother’s dresser drawers, or something. (I do give them props for petitioning the Fed in lieu of suggesting you raid Grammy’s coin-and-currency archive. Hey, what can I get for a wheat penny?)

I clicked through to the Taco Bell Facebook page to see how the petition was doing. So far, it doesn’t look like they have many takers: