Just exactly what do you expect me to say here? That Madame Jane can channel John Maynard Keynes? That the ghost of Adam Smith hovers over my house waiting to come down the chimney like Santa Claus? That Henry George and his "Law of Rent" is gonna rise up from the grave and give me advice that will save our sorry bottoms from the inevitable at this late date just because we wised up and voted Democratic in November and stopped watching Fox News? Well, guess what? Sometimes even Madame Jane's all-knowing crystal ball can't put humpty-dumpty back together again. Sorry about that.

Every single economic expert in the world who can count to ten without the help of his or her fingers and toes is now going around chanting predictions that GWB's one-dimensional fiscal policy of draining America's economy into his private Swiss bank account is bound to create the Big Daddy of all Great Depressions. You don't have to be a stargazer to come up with that one. Just read the Wall Street Journal.

Of course you can't stop the inevitable. But you can surely attempt to perform damage control.

Recently, Madame Jane has employed literally HORDES of tarot readers, psychics, palm readers and astrologers (and the Wall Street Journal) to work night and day on just one simple question, but so far no one on my future-predicting damage-control team has come up with an answer. What is the question? "How do I protect myself and my family against the coming hard times?"

"Should I buy gold?" I asked my clairvoyant-in-chief. "Will my pension plan be safe?" I asked my palm reader. "Should I buy property?" I asked the Wall Street Journal, "or condos on the moon...." Or rob a bank or marry someone with Halliburton stock or what?????

No one knows. The wellsprings of fortune-telling on this subject have all dried up. Sorry about that.

Economic disaster is roaring down upon America like a freight train out of control and you and me and the American middle class are now tied to the freaking railroad tracks! So. What should we do? I have an idea. Madame Jane predicts that it's time to do some RESEARCH. If you know anyone who was born before 1905, chase them down, corner them in the old folks home and grill them! "When the Great Depression hit back in 1929, how did you protect yourself? What did you do?" Or, better yet, ask them, "What was the one thing that you wish to God you had done back in 1928?" See what they say. Send me the answers. Please! And please send them soon.

Madame Jane predicts that one of the things that most of them will say is, "I surely do wish that we had impeached Herbert Hoover BEFORE things got out of hand."