How's your portfolio these days? How's that bottom line? Still thinking of privatizing social security? Still clinging to those IRAs and 401ks?

In case you missed it, the piper came calling last week for Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers & AIG, just a couple weeks after Fannie & Freddie had to quit. The subprime mortgage market which collapsed a couple years ago finally caught up with the big boys. People called it a crisis, stockholders caused a panic, and the stock market went down, up, down, up. In the end, your shoddy business practices will catch up to you.

This would all have been fine except for one glaring move by the government. In one day's time, the government came up with an $85 billion bailout for AIG. "It was just to big of an institution to go down." Really? What happened to that capitalist dog-eat-dog-may-the-most-money-win mentality? If people had their money invested in these corrupt and (dare I say) greedy companies, it serves them right to lose their money. If you back the wrong horse at the track, there's no coming back.

Let me tell you a tiny tale. A couple years ago, I had some extra cash, and being the movie buff that I was, I thought buying a couple hundred shares of IMAX for 10 dollars a share was a good move. Wave of the future, that IMAX. Big screens, soon there will be one in every theater near you! Little did I know that the price on those shares was what it was because people thought IMAX would be bought out. It never was. In one day's time, it went from 10 dollars a share to five. My two grand investment instantly turned into one grand. Nothing had changed in the company. No financial crisis. No big who-hah when it happened. I lost half my investment in one day, and no one cared. These days, IMAX sits in the seven dollar a share range, and I still own the stock. Someday, I might make my money back on those big screens.

So, do you think I'm weeping for the folks who lost a quarter of their investments? Do you think I'm applauding the government for saving AIG? Fuck no. Playing the stock market is gambling. You are placing bets on companies, and don't put any money in that you're not prepared to lose. It's the same rules that apply to casinos. You bet on financial institutions? Sorry, that horse came up lame. We had to shoot it. You want your money back? That money is gone.

Let me ask you this, dear reader of Internet columns: How is it that the government can come up with $85 billion for a bailout in basically one day, and the American people have been enduring the 100 percent inflation in gas prices during the last two years? Who is the government really taking care of? I'm not half as worried about my retirement as I am about the state of union right at this moment. What we do in the present creates the future, so let's fix the problems that affect us all rather than the problems that affect people with hundreds of thousands of dollars on hand. FYI, for $85 billion, you can give EVERY man, woman & child in America more than $250. It makes those checks we got seem insignificant, doesn't it? Oh, wait a minute, they pretty much were.

You know what the kicker is for all of this stock market freak out? The Dow Jones average is pretty much the same as it was when the week began. Sure, those financial institutions are in the toilet, but they deserve to be. I knew subprime loans were a bad idea when they were doing them. Don't lend people money without background checks and money up front. Are you insane? Or are you greedy?

Now, thanks to these subprime loans, homes have such inflated prices that anyone who still believes in that good ol' American Dream is really going to screw themselves sideways trying to pay for a house. Was that a run-on sentence? I could have kept going with it, too.

Down with AIG, Merrill Lynch & Lehman Brothers! People losing their jobs? Try driving a cab for a living. People losing their pensions? Trust no one but yourself with your money. Think the government wants to help you out in your time of need? They would rather help out Big Business any day. This is capitalist America, and we better start accepting the horrible ugly side of it if we're going to drink the cream when it comes.

If there is one thing I've learned in the last eight years, it's that we are on our own, people of America. All together, we are on our own.

Chris Jungle waits patiently for an IMAX rally.