All right, how about "One nation under intensive care"? Okay, we'll get back to you.
 
Actually, we were trying to distract you from the fearsome proliferation of bad business news. It seems as though our institutions are Hindenburging all around us ("Oh, the equity!").
 
Sadly, rounding up the usual suspects -- Greed, Arrogance, Stupidity, Dick Cheney -- has not helped to penetrate the mystery of our economic free fall. A glimmer of light, however, appears in a recent report issued by the Honk Bleakly Institute for Downward Mobility.
 
In "We Wuz Robbed!", the authors contend that the valuation of national goods and services has for the past fifteen years been expressed not in U.S. Dollars (USD), but in Andersen Dollars (AAD). This is significant because Andersen Dollars have no fixed value, being instead a situational currency. To explain:
 
Let's say this year you earned $15,000 USD (If this is not 1920 you really must start thinking about finding a new job.) This is an amount equivalent to $175 million Andersen Dollars. If, on the other hand you owe your grocer $250 USD, your grocer actually owes you $150,000 AAD. You can see how over time this accounting method might lead to imprudent action.
 
Returning to traditional standards, the HBIDM has calculated the true net value of the United States to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $175.11 USD, give or take a few dollars, and depending on whether or not Mrs. Beasley returns the coffee-maker.
 
If adopted, this standard might cause some significant social changes. For one thing the job of CEO wouldn't be nearly as much fun. It might easily take a month's salary just to get enough gas to drive your Mercedes to the office. Though on the plus side more than enough of your fellow Americans would now be grateful for the opportunity to carry you there by sedan chair.
 
As in all social disasters, the American mind immediately grapples with the salient issue of whom to blame, and corporate leaders are most often fingered in the lineup. A certain amount of ordure has even attached itself to our beloved national leader, who, little more than a decade ago, demonstrated extraordinary market prescience by dumping his own company's stock before it defenestrated to a value easily visible under a good electron microscope.
 
But the loudest public criticism has focused not on the President's extraordinary intuitive powers, but on his failure to report the transaction within the mandatory time limit -- one considerably shorter than the 34 weeks he took to cough up the documents.
 
Although the White House Truth Machine has offered a potpourri of explanations for this lapse, our favorite, is #104. This version begins on a sunny morning in 1990, on the very day, mind you, of the transaction. the President and his companion, Jiminy Cricket set off to file the necessary papers. Almost immediately they meet a fast-talking fox and cat, who persuade them to join a sinister traveling show, and later to journey to the island of Lost Boys, where the President is nearly turned into a donkey but escapes before the transformation is complete.
 
Through a series of mishaps that, from the lips of another narrator, might strain credulity, the President eventually finds himself swallowed by a giant whale wherein, enervated and donkey-eared, he is reunited with his pet cat and fish -- Figaro and Cleo -- and, most miraculously, his father, Geppetto. Through a clever ruse the five contrive disgorgement from the leviathan's tum-tum and land -- as luck would have it -- exhausted upon the doorstep of the SEC, where the much-abused Commander in Chief promtply files the papers and as a reward is turned into a real boy.
 
Mr. Bush confesses that throughout these terrifying adventures he was sustained by a single thought: "Gotta file them papers!"
 
We find this to be the most reasonable of the accounts so far offered, and the one most pleasing to our collective ear and imagination. It's funny how you can always tell a true story when you hear it, and this one strikes us as being right on the nose.
 
Speaking of growing things, by the way, this week's masterpiece of the narrative art, "Flag Waivers," traces the roots of a brouhaha -- curiously unreported by the press -- that took place upon the White House lawn during the recent celebration of our Nation's birthday.
 
Oh, and further kudos to our Great Pacifier! The President has taken a bold step toward peace in the Middle East by proposing the creation of a Palestinian state to be created anytime after the next Presidential election -- provided the Palestinians come to their senses and elect someone Ariel Sharon likes.
 
We swear, we don't know why everyone says the President hates Arafat. He's done everything he possibly can to get the man re-elected.
 
Still, we note his avowed interest in removing the Palestinian leader from office on the grounds that he (Mr. Arafat, that is) is a terrible leader. We agree that terrible leaders should be repudiated, and we commend the President for his astute -- and evidently selfless -- declaration. He is truly a man who knows a black kettle when he sees one.
 
That's a wrap for this week. We'll see you again when the next seven calendar pages fly away in the time montage.
 
Cheers,
 
Hank
 
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