Nobody realized, I guess, that when Francis Fukuyama termed the finale of Cold War ideological combat the "end of history" we were less than 20 years away from the evident implosion of the free-market system - and this time, our own retirement accounts, savings... our futures... would be the history kissed off.

Wow. Have things ever changed in just the past few months! I was breezin' through late summer when - poof! - I woke up one day in mid-September and realized now I'll need to work until I'm 80 f*ckin' years old because that nagging piper who always needs paying finally caught up with our Ponzi-scheme economy.

Since this is my week to propose empty, feel-good gestures, I say we need a red-letter, symbolic end to the corkscrewy ideology of a self-correcting, unfettered market - that plum dream of conservatives, hardcore libertarians, neoconservative economists and hotboxing MBA students with access to that fine, fine prescription bud. Communism's collapse came two decades ago, Francis, with gleeful youth sledgehammering the divide between East and West Germany. How about our own capitalist-based Fall of the Berlin Wall? Maybe... we...truck-bomb Wall Street?

...Metaphorically, of course...

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It's very difficult, living as I do with a small, much-beloved child in my household, to ignore the very sad Florida case of Caylee Anthony and her spiritually sterile, sociopathic mother. I tend to see my own little girl's promise and vulnerability in this missing child's short, apparently shunned life.

Cable news coverage has been excruciating - including near-obsessive devotionals by the truly scary, endlessly rampaging Nancy Grace, who herself always seems a hissy fit away from a premenstrual killing spree. Now that it's apparent the little girl's body has been found, and the case possibly will develop into one of murder, seamy bottom-feeders like Grace and Geraldo Rivera flock around the defense team of Jose Baez, the attorney for the tot's mom.

This platoon of legal experts - including forensic specialist Dr. Henry Lee - is clawing hard to get access to the autopsy and crime scene, and there is a slew of other demands for privileges one would assume usually fall within the state's domain. It doesn't seem discovering truth is the goal they're after - it's control of evidence presentation, both in court and before TV photofloods. Legal experts hired by the networks support a consensus expanded by the defense: If the law can be twisted to the degree that a jury believes it's not a crime to allow a child to die and then throw away her body like bagged garbage, then the defendant will - and should - walk free. 

It's not a matter of being innocent or guilty, it's a matter of being well-defended or under-represented. Across the board, we have a system not of laws... but of lawyers. It's all how the most popular narrative is interpreted. The subjective nature of the courtroom - its show business - has trumped any ideals of objective search for fact.

And justice be damned.

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Since, over the past few months, President Bush has finally capitulated - admitting that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and that al Qaeda wasn't present in Iraq before we invaded - maybe it's time to pry loose a few more admissions from this most mendacious of Presidents, institute a kind of "truth and reconciliation" exchange that would clear up some of his administration's other thoroughly discredited narrative.

He could, maybe, sit at a picnic table in a suburban ballpark, surrounded by dog-walkers and mommies with strollers as early-morning bird chirps fill the air. (And, no, there'll be no shoe-hurling allowed.) The President could just... kinda... level with us. What went wrong. Why it went wrong. Who was pressing all the wrong stuff. 

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Since the world's financial markets are headed south, it's likely Santa won't - and this year we can all look forward to the hard coal of fiscal reality in our stockings.

Added to that are ominous reports that the mortgage mess triggering our free fall is likely to get worse: An eye-popping report on "60 Minutes" last night outlined the second and third sucker punches from the housing market slugfest, sparked by reset loan fees socking us through the roofs of our once wildly overpriced homes.

To stave off those further rounds of mortgage defaults, eviction and market detonations, how about a fixed-date freeze on Adjustable Interest Mortgage (ARM) resets?

Let's disarm the ARMs. And then - how about doing away with the egregious adjustable interest rates altogether? 

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