THERE'S NEWS AND THEN THERE'S NEWS

First, the Glenn Beck version of the news:

GLENN: Hey, I want you to know that the Fed has made a little bit of a profit this year.

PAT: No big deal, though.

GLENN: Yeah. It's only, it's only just a little bit more than Exxon made last year.

PAT: Let's not blow that out of proportion, though. That sounds on the surface like it's a lot of money.

GLENN: Yeah.

PAT: But it's not even $1 trillion.

STU: Right. It's way less.

PAT: $46 billion. ExxonMobil made 45.

STU: If you say $46 billion, you are not including $100 million because it's 46.1.

PAT: It's easy as change.

STU: But that's nothing. That's just thrown on top of it.

GLENN: So they made $46 billion.

STU: 46.1.

GLENN: $46.1 billion last year, the Fed did, a private corporation where we don't even know who really owns the Fed.

PAT: Are they fat cats?

GLENN: No, no.

STU: They are definitely not corporate fat cats.

PAT: All right, I shouldn't have even brought that up.

GLENN: So they made $46.1 billion. ExxonMobil last year made how much?

STU: Well, when it was a big controversy, 2008, they made record profits of $45 billion.

Not once during this segment did Beck or his stooges mention one important point, something the AP managed to squeeze in:

Fed Posts Record Profit Of $46.1B For Last Year

by The Associated Press
January 12, 2010
The Federal Reserve made a record profit of $46.1 billion last year, reflecting money made off its extraordinary efforts to rescue the country from the worst economic and financial crisis since the 1930s, the central bank announced Tuesday.

The windfall gets turned over to the Treasury Department.

It marks the biggest profit on record dating back to 1914 when the Fed was created. The previous record profit - of $34.6 billion - was registered in 2007. In 2008, the Fed reported a profit of $31.7 billion.

The Fed says the bigger profit was primarily due to increased income from the securities it held last year.