The Register-Herald, Beckley, W.Va., This Side Of The Fence column: What color rain barrel would go with these shoes?

Oct 06, 2008 (The Register-Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- MCD | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- I'm sure all of my beloved readers slept a little sounder over the weekend, courtesy of the $700 billion sleeping pill provided by our nation's leaders who say they have saved the universe from certain financial ruin.

No, Chicken Little, the sky will not be raining down upon your feathered head and the 401(k) plan that you laid so many eggs for is now safe and secure courtesy of the U.S. Congress and President Bush.

I'm sure we will all miss the good ol' days of having complete strangers like U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry M. Paulson in our living rooms and laptops pouring us another cup full of fear prior to beginning a new work day.

And please forgive me, Mr. Paulson, but if you will just humor me for a moment -- exactly who in the hell are you again? I thought your official job was to put your John Hancock at the bottom right hand side of all the new one dollar bills? Who let you in and where did you come from?

And I would also like to thank everyone involved for explaining to me quite clearly what led up to this fiscal crisis that hopefully has ended with the largest government bailout -- I'm sorry, rescue plan -- since the Great Depression.

Let's see if this country boy from the Greenbrier Valley has it down pat. OK, the financial wizards on Wall Street who run the major lending companies became filthy rich by extending financial loans to people who they knew had no possible way of ever paying it back.

They turned the all-American dream of owning your own home into a get-rich scheme for themselves and now that their financial kingdom built like a house of cards has collapsed, the U.S. taxpayers were the ones left to pick up all 700 billion bent cards.

Yeah, that sounds fair enough. While millions of other hard-working families this week will have their homes taken away from them because they can't pay their loans, the financial wizards who created this havoc can stop worrying about having to sell that extra yacht they have in storage and they won't even have to lease out any of their third homes in order to provide sustenance for their families. Thank goodness for that.

But my elected leaders tell me that this bailout -- dagnabbit, I mean rescue plan -- was absolutely necessary or otherwise sometime in the near future, I could be wearing a rain barrel while heading off to the courthouse to cover news for The Register-Herald. I bet the security guards at the courthouse wouldn't even let me in if I were wearing a rain barrel.

So, I'm now being told that instead of having to immediately wear a rain barrel, I can look forward to about two or three years of a deep economic recession where I will have plenty of time to pick out exactly what type of rain barrel I will eventually have to wear. I will pick a modernistic-styled rain barrel made from cherry with purple suspenders. My sign will read: "Will write for food."

At least I'm getting the heads-up this time around and it's not like some unknown political official who usually just signs my one dollar bills has come on TV and scared me to death.

And speaking of Mr. Paulson, I wish he would come back on TV just one more time and explain to the American public exactly how much $700 billion is. My hand-held calculator keeps shutting off with an error sign each time I try to figure it out.

While I wait for Mr. Paulson to put on more pancake makeup and trot in front of the talking heads, here's some research I did on how much $700 billion is.

These figures came from www.techpresident.com.

- $700 billion is one third of the total amount of money received by the federal government in 2007, including Social Security, income tax, and all other receipts.

- $700 billion is nine times the amount of money spent on education in 2007 by the feds.

- $700 billion would pay for about 2,000 McDonald's apple pies for every single American.

These interesting tidbits came from http://miseryindex2008.blogspot.com.

- A stack of $700 billion in $1 bills would reach 44,191 miles into the sky.

- If exchanged in U.S. quarters and stacked back-to-back, they would circle the earth about 122 times.

- It's enough money to give everyone in the world $100.

- It's equal to about $2,300 for every person in the U.S.

- With $700 billion, I could buy 12 Bill Gates, 70 Hubble telescopes, 350 space shuttles or 40 million Ford F-150 pickup trucks.

OK, so now we know the difference between a million and a billion. That should help everybody sleep a little better. But the big question is this: Nobody knows if this rescue plan will work or whether we will have to pick out our rain barrels sooner than expected.

-- Christian lives in Greenbrier County. E-mail: cgiggenbach@register-herald.com

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