Oct. 12--The economy is all over the news today, and there are tons of numbers being bandied about. But none of them add up.

Consider the $700 billion bailout.

We supposedly ponied up this money so the country wouldn't go bankrupt. But was this really the best solution? There are around 200,000,000 adults in the United States, and if you divide 700 billion by 200 million, you get 3,500 bucks for every adult, which is enough to make anybody solvent, even me. Plus, a movie about a Chihuahua made $23 million in just one weekend, which means that if the government made a Chihuahua movie every weekend, we'd be out of the economic crapper in no time.

Yo quiero Taco Bailout.

Then the government lent a company named AIG $37.8 billion, after giving it a line of credit for $85 billion. I'm no math whiz, but I'm not sure this was a great investment. If somebody already owed me $85 billion, I wouldn't lend them more money until they gave me back a billion or so, unless they threw in something to sweeten the deal, like a new puppy or maybe some fleece socks.

I'm not even sure what AIG stands for. American Insurance Giant? Or maybe Avarice In General?

I confess that I don't understand where the government got the 700 billion in the first place. I know it came from us taxpayers, but taxes aren't due until April 15 and I thought we were already running on empty. So where did they get the money from, and so quick? When I need to find dough fast, I go digging in old purses and wallets. And when I'm really desperate, I hit the couch cushions. So I'm guessing the government has one really big sofa. Or maybe several hundred sofas.

Like 700 billion sofas.

Next I read that the Federal Reserve cut the prime lending rate by half a percent, but that makes no sense to me. A half a percent is, like, nothing. If I gave you half a percent of a sandwich, you wouldn't even have enough to get stuck between your teeth.

For another example, take my body-fat percentage. After weeks of going to the gym and sweating like a farm animal, I'm finally down from 31 percent to 30 percent. In other words, I lost a full 1 percent -- no fraction, the real deal. Of course, I celebrated with chocolate cake. But for half a percent, I wouldn't bother finding the cake knife.

And how about the stock market, which goes up and down like crazy? The stock graphs in the newspaper used to look like EKG charts, but now they look like lie-detector charts.

Coincidence? You be the judge.

Stocks are up 180 points one day, then down 400 the next. I don't understand much about stocks, but I do know about points.