If you have some time to kill, check out the Obama administration's new 'zine about financial regulation. It's free! Download here from the Wall Street Journal (warning: .pdf, 85 pages, no pictures). This pamphlet, which will be nailed to the door of the Federal Reserve later today, outlines "sweeping changes" that will send "shock and awe" rippling down whatever is left of "Wall Street," where they have probably found 9,204 loopholes in the damn thing already.

The takeaway, of course, is the creation of a 'roided up new Fed, which will wield fearsome power over the country's financial dealings. That is most emphatically not in the Constitution.

Brace yourselves…

The Fed emerges from the plan with the power to oversee from top to bottom almost any financial company in the country, including the firms' foreign affiliates. It would also hand the central bank another victory by allowing it to oversee any commercial company that owns a banking charter known as an industrial loan company.

To soothe lawmakers unhappy with the Fed's growing power, the proposal also recommends capping it in some ways. The administration proposes the creation of a consumer-protection agency, which would have the ability to write rules related to mortgages, credit cards and other consumer products, takes away powers previously held by the central bank.

Got that? We will give Ben Bernanke more powers (victory!). Then we will take away some of his powers (defeat!). Then we will all yell about how Ben Bernanke is sabotaging the economy with his nonsensical tricks.