This morning at work we had some kind of meeting about 401 k plans, apparently a new benefit of working for Landmark Survey Group Inc. Naturally I was late of course, so I spent the meeting gazing longingly at the coffee tureen, while Stephanie the 401 k Lady talked about 401 k's, and Brandon gazed longingly at Stephanie the 401 k Lady. It was pretty clear where he wanted to put his employee contributions! The meeting was presided over by my boss Paul's pal Mike Kozick, whom I had last seen at the company Christmas party, when he drove his Mercedes smack into the concrete median divider so hard that he not only blew out the tire but also broke some mechanical doo-hicky, or rather thingamajig, which makes the wheel like, I don't know, turn or something. Fortunately he was good and drunk at the time, else he probably would have been pretty pissed off indeed.

Anyways the interesting thing about the meeting was the reactions of my various co-workers. Dennis, for example, was all impressed with Kozick, in that as Kozick, a man of style, was impeccably dressed- tie and everything- therefore he was obviously a master of the esoteric world of High Finance, in which all the acolytes are always sharply turned out, and wear ties. "Yeah" says Dennis. "Yeah, you can tell he really knows what he's talking about!"

Mohamed, evidently under the impression that Kozick was really named John Hancock (the name of the firm for which he works), had an entirely different take. "Did you see John Hancock's car??!" Obviously, any financier who wore nice clothes and had a nice car got such fine things by stealing them out of the mouths of the Working Man. After all, there are only so many dollars in the world, and it's not like bankers do any actual work. By now Mohamed was going off to me about some guy he had seen on the news ("You hear about this guy? This Bernie somebody guy?") and I thought he was talking about Bernie Kosar, the Cleveland Browns quarterback from back in the day, who had been in the news lately for going bankrupt. "Oh yeah" I said, "yeah, that sure was a shame!" I don't really care so much about Bernie Kosar, of course, and I couldn't imagine his relevance to finance in general, let alone to 401 k plans, but you know sometimes you got to be conversational. "Fifty billion dollars! Fifty billion dollars! Where did it go? Where did it go?" says Mohamed. If there had been a table nearby, I'm pretty sure he would have banged it. "ah, well, ah I don't know?" I mean, fifty billion? I had no idea that quarterbacks made that kind of dough. Honest to God I thought they only made like, millions or so. Don't get me wrong I know my money and everything but I'm pretty sure that even Bernie Kosar couldn't fritter away that kind of money on hookers and blow, which is what NFL stars generally fritter their money away on, as everybody knows.

But it turns out that the Bernie that Mohamed had in mind was actually Bernie Madoff (so aptly named, because he made off with so much money! Get it? Madoff? Made off? Ha! Ha Ha!) who was also in the news- at the very same time- after having been caught perpetrating some truly monumental ponzi scheme which left thousands of morons broke, from coast to coast.

"Man!" said Brandon. "Did you see that Stephanie?"