ben bernanke

May Day is observed in most countries outside of the U.S. as International Worker's Day or Labor Day. The word "mayday" is also a distress signal, a call for help and a call to action. Shepard Fairey, a longtime underground and street artist who came to be a household name with his "Hope" poster of Barack Obama, evoked both of these meanings at once with his "May Day" exhibition at Deitch Projects in New York City. Fairey's prints take on an array of political issues and celebrate icons from rock'n'roll, sports, and politics; from Woody Guthrie to Joe Strummer, Muhammad Ali to Aung San Suu Kyi. His friend and frequent collaborator, writer and filmmaker Antonino D'Ambrosio, wrote an essay to accompany the exhibition. In addition to the gallery show, Shepard hasn't forgotten his street art roots, painting a mural on the street at Lafayette and Bowery, and several less formal pieces of his have been spotted throughout the city recently. The exhibit is open through May 29th at the Deitch gallery. We sat down there recently with Shepard and Antonino to talk about art, rock'n'roll, populism, politics, and the common threads that run through all of their work. Plutarco El'as Calles was both a military general and later one of the most controversial presidents of Mexico. He is known for his status as a revolutionary hero, but also for bringing these (sometimes brutal) military tactics into his political career. Our Got Doc this week is "El General," a film created by Calles's granddaughter, Natalia Almada. She uses documentary film as a medium to reconcile her family's memories with her country's collective memory by telling the story through her grandmother's revelries. Finally, bipartisan agreement and a strike of progress in government regulation of the financial industry: In a unanimous vote of 96-0, the Senate passed an amendment to open the Federal Resere to a one-time audit of its lending between Decemeber 2007 to the present. Led by Ron Paul and Alan Grayson in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate and pushed by our friends at FireDogLake, the bill now heads to conference. Mary Bottari of BankstersUSA.org and the Center for Media and Democracy weighs in on a hard-fought victory for Main Street over Wall Street.

"No one could've seen this coming." We heard that line over and over again as the economy crumbled around our ears. Yet many people DID see it coming, and Dean Baker was one of them. Co-Director of the Center for Economic And Policy Research, blogger at Beat the Press, and author of a new book, False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, Baker joins guest host Esther Armah in studio to explain the causes of the crisis, the reasons the stimulus wasn't big enough, and why Ben Bernanke should've been fired, not reconfirmed.

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders has been an outspoken leader in the Senate on everything from the fight for single-payer health care reform to blocking Fed chair Ben Bernanke's reappointment. The Vermont legislator has won election and reelection by continually communicating with and fighting for the people, and he offers his advice to progressives and to President Obama in this exclusive interview with GRITtv.

Joe Lieberman hijacked news coverage for a while this week, but it was Howard Dean's defense of real health care reform that inspired White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to a snarling personal response. Ben Bernanke was anointed Time's Person of the Year despite a hold on his renomination and a bill passing the house to audit the Federal Reserve. Is the Establishment closing ranks around its own? John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation and co-author of the upcoming The Death and Life of American Journalism, thinks so. Karen Fragala Smith of Newsweek and Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting also join us to discuss this week in news.