Bailing Out Wooden Arrows with Wooden Nickels

According to the gurus over at Wikipedia, “A wooden nickel, in the United States, is wood token coin, which are usually issued by a merchant or bank as a promotion, sometimes redeemable for a specific item such as a drink. Wooden nickels were most commonly issued in the US in the 1930s, after the Great Depression.”

Which is fine (as far as it goes), although in the sense of the current bailout of fraudulent and specious investment vehicles, it seems the wooden nickel is upon us almost before the fact. We have been snookered out of our underwear before the game began.

Investment ‘vehicles’ are well named, invented as they are to drive off with your money. In case you missed the point of the failure in the House of Representatives to pass Hank Paulson’s giveaway to his former partners in crime over at Goldman Sachs, it was to provide political cover for the coming election, while allowing the Senate to unashamedly lard the legislation.

Seldom does the Senate step in ahead of the House, bu…