PAUL:	Have you ever had one of those ... days, I guess, 
	although sometimes it seems like weeks or months ... have 
	you ever had one of those days where you just can't separate 
	the truth from the fantastical ?

	Or have you ever gotten them confused, reality that seems 
	too weird to be made up, for example, or nightmares that 
	suddenly turn all-too-real ?  Ever experienced a brain-hurricane 
	that leaves a trail of twisted mental-mobile homes and snapped 
	coco-puff synapses in its wake ?

	Two weeks ago, I'm discussing my retirement pension fund, they 
	say you got to have a cool million in your RRSP portfolio before 
	thinking of calling it quits, I'm talking investment with my 
	financial adviser, Bernard Ayres. Bernard's saying "buy Freedonian 
	kopeks, buy Happy Notes, currency is in and liquid", whatever that means.
 
	I took some of his advice, plowed my not insubstantial savings, 
	and Mom's OAP, into Indosamnesian timber futures - I OWN half of 
	the once arable now miserable land there - and then the bomb !

	Some guy jumps out of a helicopter, or absconds with the treasury 
	or something, anyway, the currency all of a sudden is no longer liquid, 
	it certainly isn't solid, and I'm left holding the Southeast Asian gas 
	bag ... and it's empty !

	Bernard is not returning my calls.

	But it's not only me.  Jeez, did you see the news from the States?  
	Get the edge, go with the Hedge ?  They got bazillionaires and 
	industry leaders, and geniuses, for crying out loud, geniuses, 
	investing in it !  And they all got rooked !
 
	But I guess Nobel Prize winners and gazillionaires got friends 
	in high enough places - read 'bail out'!

	Global credit crunch, indeed.
	What, they're too rich to lose their money ?

	And then they go on about the welfare bums, after getting their 
	own government life preserver ! 

	Whose hallucination is this, anyway ?

	Here I am, staring down the barrel of a 50 year-old shotgun.  
	Holding a bunch of worthless Indosamnesian paper.

	Who's going to bail me out ?  I've lost my shirt !

	(WHISPERS)  And what about Mom !?