Federal Reserve Bails Out Metallica Album

The Federal Reserve is leading a desperate struggle to prop up one of the recording industry's biggest and most well known artists as its latest release continues to languish on store shelves and internet retailer warehouses around the country.

Reminiscent of the flurry of bank buyouts conducted by the government in recent months, the Fed said it will pay Warner Brothers Records $30 million dollars for 2 million unsold copies of Metallica's new release "Death Magnetic" to buttress the label, whose exposure to a storm of criticism that the album sucks had led to a crisis in confidence that neither the company nor the band could remain viable.

"As heavily invested as they are in the group, a flop as monumental as 'Death Magnetic' was shaping up to be would not only spell the likely end to the triumphant career of America's most famous heavy metal band, but severely encumber the distribution of the work of other such celebrated Warner Brothers artists as Static-X, Paris Hilton and Larry the Cable Guy should the label fail, and that would be a real shame," said Charles Boddicker of The American Economist.

The decision to buy out what remains of what many consider the latest futile attempt by a group of pitiful old men to recapture the glorious but more than obviously fleeting synergy of their youthful musicianship has elicited an angry backlash from citizens across the country.

"What kind of free market is that? It's a shitty album with even shittier production, and I say let it tank," remarked one outraged man who acknowledged being a Metallica fan 'before they started to suck sometime after World War II', "I don't pay my taxes to subsidize the transcendental kabbalah psychotherapy treatment of a bunch of has-beens, I pay them so the government can bomb the bejeezus out of Muslim people."

A spokesman for the Fed stated that they plan to recoup as much of the $30 million subsidy as possible over the long term by putting the albums on Ebay for a Buy Now price of $0.99 and erase the remainder to sell as rewritable discs.