Hedge fund against anxiety

Know what a Collaterized Debt Obligation is? I'm going to ask the next few friends I talk to, just for fun. I'm guessing that the ones who don't know are happier than the ones who do. Aw shucks, it's just a guess.

There are different ways to be safe from a menacing wave at the seashore, and we discovered as kids that the best way by far was to duck under it. It's counterintuitive at first, but it works.

Lack of wealth is a counterintuitive hedge fund against anxiety, but it certainly feels to me like insulation from the vicissitudes of "Marketplace's" wildly bipolar emotions of "We're in the Money" on Monday and "Stormy Weather" on Tuesday. Jesus wasn't kidding when he said "Blessed are the poor." Are not the markets the modern day "bruised reed" that if a man leans on pierces him? (Isaiah 36:6)

The wise man of Ecclesiastes concurs on the downside of too much money: "He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income" (5:10). Besides which you can't take it with you, and when you die you may leave it to a fool (2:18,19). For you youngsters, the wise man also suggests a better long-term financial strategy:

"There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?" (2:24,25)

I know scads of people who won't lose any sleep tonight over Bear Stearns.