I'm watching Nightly Business Report on PBS, and adding to my understanding of the latest sure-fire scheme the Federal Reserve and Treasury have in mind to save the national and global economies from the excesses and malfeasance of recent years.

Are you familiar with the term Honey Wagon? What Messrs Paulson and Bernanke seem to have in mind is the creation and dispatch of an enormous tax-funded entity/device of this sort to tour the financial landscape, sucking the, uh, compromised securities out of various ordinary and 'shadow' banks.

As they complete the extraction at each financial outpost into their big Treasury tank of the odiferous and now unwanted financial inventions, I can see them peering into dark recesses of the holding tank. To give you some idea how they will value the seemingly worthless paper, put it in the more traditional context of Septic Service..."Uh, that big turd floating over there? That probably was once a big porterhous steak. I'll give you $50 bucks for that...That yellow effluent in which it floats includes the aftermath of a nice bottle of Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos 2006 Dom. Fevre Burgundy? Here's another $125.". And so on, as they continually peel off freshly printed currency to make things right again for the hapless bankers and brokers.

Below, witness our dedicated Treasury and Fed officials implementing the largest bailout in the history of the world, perhaps at a bank in your own neighborhood....



I wonder what the effect will be of adding 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 or so more dollars to the national account deficit?

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