Anyone halfway intelligent and alert can pay attention to current events, put the pieces together for themselves, thereby triggering hundreds of emotional responses ranging from idle, bemused concerned to stark terror and utter fear.

It may be that anyone who is completely, fully intelligent never dwells in the vast middle, but operates only at either end of the spectrum -- either completely tuned out and disinterested, or wealthy as all-get out, and out buying their own reality, somewhere pleasant.

The available scenarios here seem pretty unsatisfactory -- well, to be honest, except for the one where you're a billionaire, out buying some white sugar-sanded islands in a warmed, turquoise-y Pacific area, dropping out for a while to simply enjoy life, for a change.  Umbrella drinks and all.

(Yes: The problem with delicious daydreams is doubling back, detouring down to the doldrums. Hmmm. OK -- Let's start again, shall we?)

Some people on the left are alarmed that Treasury Sec Timothy Geithner is leading negotiations to deal with the Fiscal Cliff (or the Fiscal Bunny Slope) being held between the Obama administration and the Congress. Okay, he wouldn't be my pick, but he does have the expertise and the staff to deal with it.

Let's clear up a couple of things, Geithner never worked for a Wall Street bank. He was Governor of the NY Fed, which is largely responsible for riding herd on the the Wall Street banks, but that business was completely out of control before he got the job.

Now this doesn't prove anything one way or another, but Geithner was simultaneously on the board of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS). It was this body that pulled the plug on the Wall Street banks transferring money between banks in 2008 over their involvement in the selling of a quadrillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000,000) worth of un-backed derivatives. This effectively froze the US banking system overnight.

Money is the price of admission to this circus called life.  It's mandatory, not optional.  Without money, diddly squat gets done. Money's what greases all our skids and connects up all our dots and our lives, like it or not.

Money is, and can be, many things.  However, most rational people would agree that one thing money should not be, is a club -- a weapon, pulverizing and penalizing people in pursuit of basic, daily needs.

If you agree, you'll instantly see the beauty of The Rolling Jubilee.  It describes itself as a bailout for the 99% by the 99%.  It uses the moves of banksters against them, like jiujitsu.

Where banks seek profit by buying people's debt obligations, spending pennies on the dollar for the right to harass debtors for full payment, The Rolling Jubilee does something unexpected: Using donations, it buys the debt -- then retires it.

• Poof! No more debt.  Completely legal.

The numbers are up:  We now have 50 million people in our country who are poor -- while online sales on Black Friday busted one billion bucks for the first time.

The increased stats on the poor stem from a new census measure that considers medical costs and work-related expenses. The new formula also means there are more people now living below the poverty line than in 2010 -- about 16% of the population.

Interestingly, online sales from November 1st this year are also up 16%  -- from the same period last year -- while the number of Americans visiting online shops this Black Friday was 57.3 million, an increase of 18%.  Cyber Monday sales were expected to push past 1.5 billion dollars.

Now, what do you suppose anyone will make of those two radically different sets of numbers, slammed together and asked to play nicely together?

The return to work -- Monday, after a long, holiday weekend:  This is such a grim, dour moment in life that there's only one known antidote.  And with that, we hereby Break Glass and Pull Switch In Case of Emergency -- and are rewarded with underpants news.

The good news:  There is actually some underwear news.  The not-so-good news:  There wasn't much.  News, that is -- although, now that you mention it, unmentionables are getting so tiny anymore that there's not much of them in that sense, either.

Well, to paraphrase a war criminal:  You go to work the Monday following a long holiday weekend with the underwear you have, not the underwear you wish you had.

Buck up, remain strong, everyone -- and we'll get through this return-to-employment crisis together, patriotically clad in 100% American underwear!

On that elastic note of a pep talk -- and before anyone gets his or her bloomers in a wad and flags us a penalty for delay in story -- a pair of Queen Victoria's linen bloomers were auctioned recently in the UK, bringing about $575, the BBC reports.  (It was just one item, yet they are called a pair -- perhaps because they are singular at the top, but plural at the bottom.)

Selected numbers appear to show consumer spending is way up, thanks to the 'black' days, cyber day, and on and on with the hype. A closer looks suggests it's really more like a one or two percent increase for the quarter; it's really all about building up a shopping frenzy. Are consumers really spending more at all? Or are they simply desperate to stretch their ever declining incomes to meet pent up demand to replace worn out consumer goods?

Then there is the gnawing need to provide the American dream for yourself and your family. It's not that people really feel the need to buy more junk from China, it's that they know deep down that they're in trouble. And they want so badly to kid themselves that they are still middle class. The evidence for this is that consumer debt is way up. The business channel folks actually point to this increase in debt as proof that the economy is turning around, and there is a certain amount of truth to that, in the same way a soap bubble is a new house.