Ben Bernanke is advised to watch out for any flying cups of coffee or suspicious-looking pies.

...QE is designed to buy Treasuries and other assets, but the Fed does not simply go out and buy Treasuries itself; it does it through its primary dealers, who include of course banks like Goldman, Sachs. The Fed all but announces when it’s going to be doing this buying and in what quantity, which allows the banks to buy up this stuff at lower prices ahead of time and then sell it to the Fed at inflated cost. Even forgetting about the obvious insider trading aspect to all of this, the official middleman status of the banks is a direct government subsidy and it is little remarked upon, even by the Tea Party crowd, which is otherwise so opposed to “welfare.” But these sorts of subsidies exist all throughout the financial services industry.

Quantitative Easing: The Latest Government Subsidy For Banks [RS via HNM]

Related (...?): Horse Semen, Scalding Hot Coffee: Matt Taibbi Suddenly Making So Much Sense