You know, I've been feeling lately that I don't have much of a stake left in this country that I've always called home, like I don't have control over anything anymore.

Thank goodness New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made me part of something again!  When asked to comment on the group of protesters known as "Occupy Wall Street," he had this to say, according to a recent article in Salon:

The protesters are protesting against people who make $40-50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet. That’s the bottom line,” Bloomberg said, presumably meaning service workers on Wall Street, adding that we all share blame for taking on too much risk, not just the financial industry.

I knew I was to blame for something!  Although I didn't kill JFK, invent New Coke, or cause 9/11, apparently  the state of America's economy is my fault!  This line of "thinking" is certainly nothing new, but it's so refreshing to learn from a billionaire that I am his equal in at least this one respect.

I guess if you have any kind of "investment portfolio," you suddenly have the same status as a hedge fund manager or the CEO of an investment bank. Who says egalitariansim in America is dead?

But do people really have a choice? We've come a long way from the days of grandmas owning shares of so-called "blue chip" stocks and buying U.S. Savings Bonds for their grandkids, to being forced into becoming Wall Street "playas."

In 1998, 67% of Fortune 100 companies offered pension plans to their employees (and of course, those pension plans also became the victims of the completely rigged casino game that Wall Street has become).  That has gone down alarmingly fast to just 17% in 2010. What is being offered in place of those defined-benefit plans is the defined-contribution plan known as the 401k. Yes, all us poor schlubs out there who are socking away $50 or $100 per paycheck in order to "play the market" have surely contributed in a major way to the worldwide economic malaise that threatens to suck every last dollar into a giant wormhole.

Looking back, I can see now that it was my unbridled greed that led to the collapse. Why, in May of 2008, my 401k was valued at a mind-boggling $30,411.62. In my imagination, I was already tricking out the 1/100th of a yacht that I could buy with that impressive stash. Then along came the armageddon that was September 2008.  By the first week of December, my 401k was down to $20,530.80, a staggering 32.5% loss. "No more yacht slivers for you, young (I mean middle-aged) lady! What kind of cat food do you like?"

At the time, I only felt bad that I had lost a third of what I had been saving towards my retirement. But that was so selfish of me. Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg, for making me realize that it was my reckless disregard for both law and common decency that led to the collapse of the entire world economy. I am literally drunk with power.

Oh, I've managed to recover some of my losses. Now, I'm about back to where I was more than three years ago, despite continuing to contribute the same amount to my plan in the meantime. At this rate, I'll retire with a net worth approaching .000005% of Mayor Bloomberg's!

But what I'm really wondering is why I haven't received my bailout yet. After all, aren't the greatest rewards of capitalism supposed to go to those who take the greatest risks?

According to Michael Bloomberg, I am one of those people.