I asked the tax prep guy yesterday. He clarified that the IRS was not going to be processing any refunds before February 1 this year. This is due to the Budget/Debt Ceiling fiasco. [I used to watch these things when they had meaning. What? With bailouts, helicopters, quantitative easing, shutdowns, quiet shutdowns now... bitcoins...]

I think maybe all the monetary generation went into some kind of absurd flurry as the value of the dollar sunk below the cost to print it on paper. The only saving grace is the number of zeroes you can print after the initial digit!