I remember learning the power of a dollar a very, very long time ago. There I was, barely knee high, in a Hallmark store with my father when he gave me a dollar and told me to “spend it wisely.”

That day I bought two candy bars and a small Dick Tracy action figure (yes, Dick Tracy, it was that long ago).

Now jump ahead a decade plus and you’ll find me on a beach somewhere, debating with a group of friends the legitimacy of a dollar.

“Is it even real?” we asked.

Well, it could have been the mood, the setting, the right combination of elements, or the fact that among the seven of us, all we had was that one dollar.

We decided that a dollar was no more real than Joan River’s face post 1979.

I’ve tried my best to live without letting the power of that fictitious dollar get the best of me, but at the end of the day even open-minded free spirits have bills to pay.

Now unless you have been living in the jungle for the past six months, you know nothing could further our belief of the fake dollar more than the news oozing out of Wall Street.

In short, without the corrupt blood-spattered details, the American financial system is collapsing.

The numbers that the government is throwing around are completely ludicrous: $85 billion for AIG, a $900k salary for the new CEO of bankrupt Freddie Mac, a new “tax break” that costs – that’s right, costs not saves – $100 billion.

All of this on top of a giant $800 billion plan to bail out the remaining failing corporations.

Where is all this money coming from?

Thin air, that’s where.

Now that almost every keystone of American finance is crumbling, we the taxpayers are left to clean up the mess and pay for the pensions given to the CEOs of companies that have led us down this road of economic failure.

We are going to have to pay more fake money to compensate for all the fake money the government is printing without anything to back it. All just to bail out some of the richest men in the world so they can continue being rich.

I don’t know how much it’s all going to cost each taxpayer to bail out Mr. Rich CEO X and Mr. Rich CEO Y so they can continue their lavish lifestyles, but if it costs any more than a few candy bars and a Dick Tracy action figure, I know I can’t afford it.