Reporting from the almshouse: Did you for one moment believe that we had hit bottom? Fool! Poor, poor fool. The rally is over. New York is unaffordable. And everywhere else is patrolled by mercenaries.

The IMF says that this financial crisis, if you add it all up on a calculator, will cost the world $4.1 trillion. They also say things are getting worse, so crush your optimism into a small ball, seal it in an empty jelly jar, and bury it far, far beneath the ground, where your scavenging neighbors won't dig it up for food.

To put that figure in perspective: $4.1 trillion is enough to afford a Manhattan apartment and food. Rep. Anthony "Dirty Water" Weiner made a big show of putting out some "report" saying a quarter of New Yorkers pay half their income for rent, but you, the creative underclass, already knew that. You are half of that quarter! The other half being the uncreative underclass. If you come together your rent payments will drop significantly, along with your square footage. Unite!

Because your alternative is this: moving to Oakland, where the crime-ridden streets are patrolled by private armed mercenaries accountable to no one except their pagan god and the barrel of their guns. They work cheap! There's no choice. We will all soon face a choice of being the soldier of fortune arrester, or the overcrowded apartment-dweller arrestee.