Two big stories caught my eye recently, and suddenly, for the first time, I feel as if I understand the whole money thing.

First, in a secret weekend action, the Federal Reserve moved quickly to throw dollars (30 billion of them!) at Bear Stearns, an investment bank that suddenly found itself without anything to invest. Seems the Bear Stearns guys were taking in suckers' savings right up till Friday afternoon, and then planned to simply hang a "closed" sign in the window on Monday morning.

The Federal Reserve took action to shore up confidence in the stock market.

I know very little about finance (just ask my wife). Until this, I didn't even know what the Federal Reserve was. Now, I understand that it's an organization designed to give our tax dollars to rich people. And Bear Stearns, which I thought was a department store, is a place full of Wall Street guys in expensive suits who take little guys to the cleaners, I now realize.

In the second story, our congressmen swarmed all over each other to try and be the first to fix the looming mortgage crisis. This crisis occurred because people who couldn't really afford houses bought them anyway, using money they borrowed from banks who knew those folks wouldn't be able to pay them back.

The government had to move quickly or people would lose confidence in the whole concept of buying ridiculously overpriced homes with money they don't have and can't ever get. (Rule of thumb: There's something screwy going on when a house is supposedly worth millions but is covered with vinyl siding.) At press time, the government still hadn't figured out exactly what to do but agreed it ends with throwing billions of dollars at the problem in hope it will go away.

I stared at my paper for a few minutes. Then it hit me. The government is is helping two groups of people: the really, really rich people, who probably have lots of other piles of cash to console them, and the really, really greedy people, who paid $800,000 for little cardboard box homes because they were sure they could sell them a few months later for a cool million.

It's like they're all part of some secret club I was never asked to join.

Like you, I'm not particularly rich or greedy. I have a house, but it's not worth a million dollars. It's worth basically what it's worth. I bought it because I wanted to live in it, not because I thought it would be worth a fortune any time soon. And if I go out and buy a new fridge and don't make the payments on time, I'm pretty sure two big guys with a truck are going to come knocking on my door to get it back, and I'll be yelling at the kids to hurry up and eat all the ice cream before it melts.

I turned from my newspaper and looked at my morning mail. There were the usual fat envelopes from companies I'd never heard of. Each of them told me, in big bold letters, that time was running out and I should borrow against the value of my home. I keep a stack of these offers by the front door. Most of them say "Dated Material" on the envelope, a tip that they're not worth opening.

Suddenly, it hit me: I'll take my credit cards and go out and buy the most expensive stuff I can find -- huge TVs, luxury cars, maybe put in a pool. Then, I'll take these loan companies up on their offers. I'll borrow, over and over again against my home, until I'd amassed a million dollars or so.

Then I could run over to Bear Stearns, where the guys in the expensive suits would be only too happy to take my million and turn it into a billion.

As soon as I'm officially both rich and greedy, I'll be set for life. If two guys with a tow truck come and try to repossess my 2008 Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera, I'll just laugh at them.

"Call my friends at the Federal Reserve," I'll assure them between bites of caviar. "Just let them know I'm a member of the secret club."