The Way We Live Now: Throwing everything against the crumbling wall to see what sticks. What sticks: cutting back every penny of spending. Then the wall falls down. Then we rob the bank the wall was attached to.

Academics have a theory about incompetent bank robbers. If you read their discussion of this theory, you might learn something. Or, you could just skip that, and go to the average American bank, where they rob you very competently, thanks to the heroic work of skilled lobbyists who work every day to ensure that gays, terrorists, socialists, muslins, and gays don't turn this "bank reform bill" into something that will make you, the consumer, a socialist gay muslin terrorist, without so much as the fundamental right to have your neighborhood bank gamble away all your savings in exotic hedge fund investments.

Because bank reform is not an option, the sensible thing to do is to cut every last drop of money being spent by any entity anywhere that is not a bank. Subways? Cutting service (again). Libraries? Can't afford to keep em open. Strippers? We know you like to play with them, but we're going to have to close down the strip club. Better homeless than nekkid, we always say!

We're also going to just raze the city of Detroit to the ground. Don't try to act like this is a bad idea.

We do this not out of any inborn flintiness of character, but in order to save our country. Because we all know that these heartbreaking tales of woe are not the real news of the day. The real news is, something about the money in China that we don't quite understand. But you know who does? Bankers. So don't worry about it.