Like a scurry of squirrels, companies are stashing a greater percentage of assets in cash than at any time in the past 40 years. They're clearly hoarding for an unclear winter that could turn into a nuclear winter when the commercial real-estate market crashes and the Federal Reserve starts to kick out some of the props under this bubblicious market.

Just remember that the next time you hear the banks, which are saving, moaning that consumers need to step up their spending to save the economy.

So this week's Fed confab takes on special meaning. When will Ben Bernanke and crew start to unwind their frantic pumping of money into the economy and start pulling back?

Bloomberg's Craig Torres lays it out well this morning, saying there could be big problems if Bernanke "is counting on private investors to fill the void left by the Fed when its purchases [of mortgage-backed securities] ends."

U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio (NYT)

Hedge funds recovering, mergers and acquisitions are starting up again, the big banks are frantically trying to figure out how to spin their impending resumption of big bonuses. Meanwhile, "the job market is bleaker than ever in the current recession."

Trustee Plans to Sue Madoff Family Members for $198 Million (NYT)

Sharp Drop in Start-Ups Bodes Ill for Jobs, Growth Outlook (WSJ)

"U.S. stock futures are pointing toward a higher open, rebounding modestly from the market's worst week since early July."

No reform, just a cosmetic patch (Telegraph U.K., Liam Halligan)

A pox on the G-20, at which "the lack of questioning of the status quo was spectacular." Halligan notes: "Obama's oratory was typically impressive. The trouble is, it wasn't true. ... Nothing 'bold' was done to lessen systemic dangers or overhaul the global regulatory regime."

The Curious Case of the Nets' Ownership ((WSJ)

Russian oligarch's pending purchase of New Jersey Nyets continues an odd, tragicomic history of ownership of the franchise that once boasted Dr. J. Funny little story by Brad Parks notes that Bruce Ratner, who bought the team in 2004 for $300 million, wound up spending about $1.5 million per win.

Profits Poised to Surprise Again (WSJ)

Even bears are optimistic about impact on market. "One big reason for the market's continued strength is that expectations were so low for the economy and corporate earnings that the market was able to rise even on modestly good news."

`Black Swan' Author Taleb Asks Why Bernanke, Geithner Still Holding Posts (Bloomberg)

Nassim Taleb tells biz leaders in Hong Kong: "Bernanke, Geithner and Summers didn't see the crisis coming so why are they still there?"

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Warren Buffett put everyone's mind at ease, saying on CNBC and other outlets (including Fortune mag in the above video) that things are not going to get significantly worse and that we're "immeasurably better than we were a year ago."

Key word is "immeasurably." Once you start measuring, the situation is not quite so rosy — as Buffett also noted but as the media generally ignore. In the same breath as his "immeasurably better" line, Buffett said, "We're gonna have unusual losses in credit cards and in commercial real estate, all of that." "Unusual" meaning "horrendous."

Bernanke: Recession 'Likely Over' (WSJ)

Says it's over "from a technical perspective," though unemployment, a predictor and result of recession, is still increasing and up to 10 percent. More than 5 million Americans lost their jobs from December 2007 through March 2009. Now it's up to Americans who still have jobs to spend more money to pull Wall Street completely free of the recession.

Is the Recession Really Over? (Seeking Alpha, Jeff Miller)

"The announcement marks the start of a new 'silly season' where people argue about recession dating, and misconstrue statements, taking them out of context."

Vance Is Winner in Primary Vote to Replace Morgenthau (NYT)

Son of a powerful international pol (Cyrus Vance) succeeds the son of a powerful international pol (Henry Morgenthau Jr.). None of the three candidates for Manhattan D.A. (Cy Jr., Leslie Crocker Snyder, Richard Aborn) seemed to give a damn about Wall Street shenanigans or other white-collar crime, so it'll be business as usual.

Return of Day Traders Drives Rise in Volume (WSJ)

They're trying to cash in on volatile financial stocks, while the big, long-term money stays on the sidelines.

Senate Health Bill Draws Fire on Both Sides (NYT)

Liberals and conservatives hate it, so it might be pretty good.

Allen Stanford claims he cannot afford a lawyer (Times U.K.)

Thin and unshaven like an anorectic supermodel guy, Sir Allen cuts quite a figure in his off-the-rack classic orange prison jumpsuit. Forget about the pro bono stuff: High-priced firm Patton Boggs will represent him only if an insurance policy covering Stanford is applicable. In the meantime, a Houston public defender is stuck with the deadbeat.

Diamonds Post-Lehman Have No Aura (Bloomberg)

Speaking of the collapsed diamond-market bubble, Boston investment banker Christopher Ellis says:

Tories accuse Gordon Brown of lying to Parliament on cuts (Times U.K.)

Historically rude pols in parliamentary democracies have no problem with accusations of lies and other telling-it-like-it-is. Apparently, neither does at least one American: Barack Obama called Kanye West a "jackass."

A Derivatives Myth Exposed (Seeking Alpha, Jeff Nielson)

Fascinating, fear-mongering assessment of the global derivatives market, the bankers' private "casino," which has an extremely shaky, "notional" value of $1.1 quadrillion, which Nielson notes is more than 20 times the size of the entire global economy.

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Wealthy British playboy Thanos Papalexis killed tenant to finish £2m property deal (Times U.K.)

Worst landlord of the year. The millionaire is convicted of torturing and killing a shy caretaker known as Bambi because he refused to move out of a London building that Papalexis, a U.S.-based developer with a Florida mansion, was trying to sell. Papalexis's ex-lover (a former Miami porn star and high-priced hooker) told authorities that he confessed to her. Papalexis, with two Albanian henchmen, put a hood over the caretaker, tied him to a chair, beat him, and strangled him. He wrapped the body in a sheet, soaked the corpse with paint thinner, and hid it in a garage pit.

Fuld says being "dumped on" for Lehman failure (Reuters)

Poor guy. Ensconced in his country home in the Idaho mountains, the former CEO holds a pity party with a reporter who knocked on his door. Laments that he was the fall guy.

Bank of America demands thumbprint from armless bloke (Register U.K.)

Florida man, born without arms, tried to cash check made out to his wife and showed two photo IDs, but teller and branch manager refused to cash it because he couldn't give them a thumbprint. They did, however, offer to open a new account for him in his own name.

Schools Aided by Stimulus Money Still Facing Cuts (NYT)

Judges Punish Wall Street as Regulators Just Talk About Reform (Bloomberg)

"As [the battle to reform regulation of] a reluctant Wall Street inches forward about how to prevent another disaster, judges are taking the first steps toward the same goal, punishing executives and issuing rulings with national impact."

Key Week for Obama Starts on Feisty Note (WSJ)

Obama stars at boisterous Labor Day rally as showdown nears over his plans for government-run health insurance versus developing bipartisan move — see "New Fee on Health Insurance Companies Is Proposed to Help Expand Coverage" — in Congress to approve bills without such a plan.

8 Questions About Health-Care Reform (WashPost)

Handy guide.

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Delaware's Betting Plan Ruled Out By Appeals Court (Gambling Compliance)

The state that already allows corporations to gamble like crazy with little regulation is eager to offer sports betting on single games, starting Sept. 1 (to plug budget gaps), but the Third Circuit Court of Appeals says no. The major sports leagues and the NCAA had sued Delaware to stop it. So for now, all bets are off: The sports gambling stays in Vegas and the rest of Nevada and nowhere else. (Las Vegas Review-Journal story here.)

Global markets not surprised by Bernanke's reappointment (MarketWatch)

Did anyone really think that President Barack Obama wouldn't reappoint the Fed chairman? Especially now that Wall Street has declared that major combat operations against the Great Recession are over? The markets barely reacted to the news; they would have freaked if he weren't reappointed. Salon's "Ben Bernanke gets to clean up his mess" recalls Nouriel Roubini's nuanced assessment of Bernanke's performance. For harsher criticism of Bernanke, go back to Anna Jacobson Schwartz's "Man Without a Plan."

Bureau of Prisons Denies Madoff Has Cancer (NYT)

Contradicts yesterday's NY Post story. We can agree, however, that his scheme was a cancer.

Great headline by Post, but story's just a couple of paragraphs. See the actual story: the National Geographic's "Women With High Testosterone Take Financial Risks." Based on a highly spurious study of MBA students, but Wall Street's overwhelmingly male bankers can now claim that the meltdown was drug-induced and not really their fault.

Jobs, Back at Apple, Focuses on New Tablet (WSJ)

Battling back from a liver transplant, Moses returns to scale the mountain and deliver a new tablet to the faithful. The touch-screen device he's working on could be as revolutionary as the laptop was.

Chart Watchers Think This Bull Can Keep Running (WSJ)

Wall Street's wonks report that the strength of the market is "widespread." Times (U.K.): "Shares ride biggest rally for 50 years as investors bet on a rapid recovery."

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MarketWatch's story emphasizes that the Fed is apparently going to keep interest rates low for a long time. The Fed also praised itself for doing a good job.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's grilling by a House panel today left him unsinged, especially because of the dumb-ass statements spouting from various House members. A Dow Jones story headlined with "Lawmakers Attack Fed For Being 'Shrouded In Secrecy'" sums it up well. (Live blog by the NYT here.)

The Fed is secretive? Well, yeah. I'm pretty unhappy that the sun rises in the east, too. But that's what it does, that's how it functions, that's reality, and in the Fed's case, some of that secrecy is essential when setting monetary policy -- and that's why the Fed should never be given any more regulatory authority than it has. At least Dennis Kucinich gets it.

It was New York's own Edolphus Towns, the new chair of House Oversight and Government Reform, who kept complaining, according to reports, that the Fed is "shrouded in secrecy." What a waste of time this hearing is.

Ed Towns is a very poor replacement for Henry Waxman, who kicked himself upstairs to chair House Energy and Commerce. Waxman was a tiger as the Gov't Reform chair. Towns is toothless and clueless. He's not even very good at being a ringmaster for these show-and-tell trials of administration officials.

Worst case scenario: The recession may recover while the recovery recedes.

Stay tuned for more wordplay today, when current Fed chair Ben Bernanke talks with the House Budget Committee. Bernanke is expected to echo Volcker, said Bloomberg.

But in his prepared remarks, according to this morning's Wall Street Journal, Bernanke notes that the debt is killing us, but he's sounding fairly optimistic. Or fairly gloomy.

"[R]ecent data . . . suggest that the pace of economic contraction may be slowing," his statement says. That doesn't mean that it has stopped contracting.

Volcker is much gloomier. Bernanke, though, doesn't sound any more or less opaque than most other Fed chairs (aside from Volcker). You read his statement and figure it out.

Great news for bankers, though. In his prepared remarks, Bernanke says the ability of banks to raise new capital "suggests that investors are gaining greater confidence in the banking system." We already know why that is: We saved the bankers, whether or not we should have done so.

Geithner: There's a lot of power in his hands, and more's on the way.

Barack Obama's power trip against the SEC would give the banks that melted down Wall Street even more clout than they already had and still have.

You can see the giant handprints of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (a former top Fed official) and his coterie of banking industry advisers ("Geithner's inner circle jerks") all over this plan to strip the SEC of some of its regulatory power and give it to what he describes as a "retooled" Fed.

The SEC has its problems, as whistleblower Harry Markopolos so bluntly pointed out, but the Fed has a radically different setup — the banks themselves have a formal say in who serves on the regional Feds. Geithner himself had to formally pass muster with the banks when he became chair of the New York branch of the Fed, the job he held before becoming Treasury secretary.

Geithner was close enough a pal of Wall Street's banks to be heavily courted to run Citigroup by its former CEO Sandy Weill and to have advocated ways to reduce the amount of capital required to run a bank (the opposite of his current policy). See "Geithner, Member and Overseer of Finance Club," a good New York Times piece from last month, for details.)

It's one thing to have the Fed focus on the flow of money; it's another thing altogether to have it also step in as a regulator of the banks. In general, you could argue that the banks would be regulating themselves.

More on the Fed from Eliot Spitzer here ("Fed Dread"). The ex-governor has always had a lot to say about financial issues — other than how much to pay prostitutes. And a good Seeking Alpha piece, "The Bernanke Fed's Bogus Transparency," points out the Fed's built-in secrecy — the SEC may have its problems but at least it doesn't operate that way. As the Seeking Alpha piece says about the Fed:

A more benign view of the Fed is available here, but for a better overall look, check out Arohan's "Get Ready for a Changing Regulatory Environment," which gives some good background on both the SEC and Fed.

Resistance from the SEC is futile, but it's already fierce: Obama's new SEC chair, Mary Schapiro, has already gone public with her disagreement with her boss, as the Wall Street Journal reports this morning ("SEC Objects to Idea of Losing Some Oversight Power").

Obama's plan may face "big hurdles," but the SEC's resistance is likely to be futile because it has been at least a good enough regulator to not have many allies on Capitol Hill or in the banking industry.