Van Eck killed it last year with the “Helicopter Drop” Bernanke necktie, and this year, they’ve done it again.

Reader Bart L. shared these photos with me of this holiday season’s must-have neckwear: from the Vineyard Vines custom collection, this year’s tie is a tribute to the euro crisis, in the form of kicking the can down the road.

A funny thing happened on the Illinois statehouse floor – Republican Senator Christine Radgono quoted some Wu-Tang financial advice – specifically, advice from the always trustworthy rapper Raekwon. Here’s the vid:

Some of you may know that last night, Raekwon from the Wu-Tang Clan was in town
And I got some financial advice from him which I would like to share with all of you, because it does seem quite relevant:

“The most precious thing in the world is the financial security and well being of your family
You want to send your little ones to the best school, and in the end, you want to know you left them with peace of mind
nowadays we all know that cash rules everything around us
Cream. Get the money! Dollar dollar bill, y’all!”

This quote is from the hilarious skit from the Dave Chapelle show, where Wu-Tang Financial helps families to “diversify their bonds”, among other things:

In case you were wondering, the Wu-Tang song title C.R.E.A.M. is short for “Cash Rules Everything Around Me”

Remember: Christine Radgono ain’t no-one to f*** wit!

If Republicans are upset that Obama invites rapper Common to the White House, what will they say about a Republican Senator quoting Wu-Tang? Nothing, that’s what.

Remember: C.R.E.A.M.

Well, looky here: the S&P downgraded its USA credit outlook. (Source: Yahoo Finance).

Standard & Poor’s on Monday downgraded its credit outlook for the United States, citing a risk that policymakers may not reach agreement on a plan to slash the huge federal budget deficit. While the credit rating agency maintained the country’s top AAA credit rating, it said authorities have not made clear how they will tackle long-term fiscal pressures. S&P said the move signals at least a one-in-three chance that it could cut its long-term rating on the United States within two years.

So the S&P changes the outlook from “stable” to “negative” but keeps the AAA rating. That’s what I like to call “covering all bases.” Good job, S&P.

A top administration official reiterated U.S. commitment to act on Monday and said S&P underestimated that resolve. “We believe S&P’s negative outlook underestimates the ability of America’s leaders to come together to address the difficult fiscal challenges facing the nation,” said Mary Miller, assistant Treasury secretary for financial markets.

Excuse me, Mary, I have to put down my coffee before I spit it all over my monitor. Thanks for the laughs.

In other news, Citigroup’s first-quarter profit fell 32%. (Source: WSJ)

Consumer banking struggled in Citi’s U.S. home market and elsewhere, while investment-banking results dropped from the stellar results a year ago. While losses from delinquent borrowers continued to improve, allowing Citi to take money out of its loan-loss reserve, expenses rose as the bank’s legal costs increased and it continued to invest in new bankers.

Citigroup’s current problems stem from the earthquake/tsunami in Japan, which will cost about $100 million in private-equity losses, as well as $50 million in one-time charges related to regulation changes.

If you look at the stock, though, it would appear that Citi is stable, as of 11am anyway. Fortune suggests that this is because Citi still posted a profit, and that despite the Japan crisis, emerging markets still looks favorable for growth (apparently, 62% of Citigroup’s revenue comes from abroad).

As for the rest of the market, well take a look. Currently the DOW is down 227, Nasdaq down 53, S&P500 down 22.

Is the bear market here yet? Only time will tell.

The Fed makes the decision to send their failboat into uncharted waters, and boldly go where no quantitative easing has gone before:

The Federal Reserve launched an unorthodox new policy on Wednesday, committing to buy $600 billion more in government bonds by the middle of next year in an attempt to breathe new life into a struggling U.S. economy.

The U.S. central bank said it would buy about $75 billion in longer-term Treasury bonds per month as part of the new program. It said it would regularly review the pace and size of its purchases and adjust as needed depending on the path of the recovery.

Nearly 90 percent of its purchases would focus on Treasuries with maturities ranging from 2-1/2 to 10 years, the New York Federal Reserve Bank said in a statement.

Prices on 30-years fell, as did the dollar, in response. Thanks for sending the euro to 1.41 right before I leave for Europe, dude.

Additionally, the NY Fed has relaxed its rule limiting its ownership of any particular security to 35 percent (the Fed already owns about 12.5 percent of all outstanding Treasury bonds and notes), allowing it to load its books with whatever it likes, as long as it does so in “modest increments,” not that they seem to know anything about modest, though I’m hesitant to call this the sheela-na-gig of QE, or anything so dramatic. It could’ve been worse. Overall, the New York Fed expects to conduct $850 billion to $900 billion in Treasury purchases through the end of the second quarter of 2011.

Credits: Photoshop by Jason, words by me, QE2 by Ben.

Folks, consumer electronics shopping is gonna get a lot more painful this holiday season. The yen is rallying, the Bank of Japan is easing and the markets are shrugging:

Japan’s government offered a modest stimulus package Monday and the central bank took steps aimed at curbing the rising yen, but a tepid reaction from markets leaves policy makers under pressure to do more.

The 920 billion yen ($10.78 billion) stimulus is part of a double-barreled attempt to prevent the surging yen from undermining Japan’s fragile, export-led recovery. At an emergency meeting Monday, the BOJ’s policy board voted 8-1 to offer domestic financial institutions 10 trillion yen of six-month loans, in addition to the 20 trillion yen in three-month loans it has been offering.

The chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association expressed hope the BOJ move will help weaken the yen. A strong yen makes Japanese products less competitive abroad, hurting key export sectors.

The move is largely considered to be the equivalent of throwing a bone (er…. a wonton?) to the local manufacturing industry, unlikely to have any long-term effect on the yen’s rise. If the BOJ wanted to make a significant impact, they’d need to buy bonds or get their ZIRP on. And they’re resisting that:

But he seemed to rule out one common suggestion: greater “quantitative easing” through stepped-up BOJ purchases of Japanese government bonds. “The current pace of outright government bond purchasing is the most appropriate,” Mr. Shirakawa said.

He also has resisted cutting policy interest rates, which have been at 0.1% since December 2008, to zero, fearing this would interfere with money-market functioning.

(Reports that a major car manufacturer threatened to point a number of recalled vehicles with so-called “accelerator issues” in the direction of the BOJ building if they failed to act are unsubstantiated at this time.)

In sum, get those Blu-Ray players and Lexuses while you can still afford ‘em, folks — it’s unlikely we’ll see a strong loller dollar vs. the yen any time soon. Much like the top in the euro was marked by supermodels demanding their contracts be paid in that currency, we’ll probably be able to call the top in the yen by waiting for 50 Cent to change his Twitter name over to @50¥, so I’m just going to wait for that to manifest.