A snake-eating-its-tail thing happens when you think certain thoughts about money and the Federal Reserve.

Consumer prices rose just 1.7 percent in 2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. That's about half the pace of 2011 鈥� when prices went up 3 percent. A sharp slowing in the increase of gas prices was a major factor. The news means interest rates will likely stay low.

With yet another impasse over the debt ceiling looming, the White House may be forced to mull some strange solutions, but it won't be a $1 trillion coin. Weekends on All Things Considered host Jacki Lyden speaks with James Fallows of The Atlantic about the other options on table.

The leaders of the Federal Reserve just did something that sounds boring but is actually a big deal: They promised to keep interest rates super low until the unemployment rate comes way down.

The central bank's policymakers also said they expect their policies aimed at stimulating growth will remain in effect until the jobless rate drops to 6.5 percent, from the current 7.7 percent.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it will launch an underwritten public offering to sell its remaining 234.2 million common stock shares in insurer American International Group Inc., better known as AIG.

The central bank says conditions continued to improve, though not dramatically, in recent weeks. The report adds to other evidence that the economy is moving along fast enough to keep unemployment from rising, but not fast enough to bring the jobless rate down sharply.

Bernanke also said that the central bank doesn't have the tools to cushion the blow of driving off the fiscal cliff.

A sharecropper's son, he was appointed to the central bank's board in 1966 and served into 1974. Brimmer went on to serve the nation in other ways, including as chairman of the Washington, D.C., Control Board.

Global trade wars. Small-time bike thieves. And what happens when the Fed talks big. On today's show, we bring you three short Planet Money stories.