I’d like to break from the royal “we” for a moment because I need to get something pretty serious off my chest. I woke up this morning in a cold sweat, my heart pounding and an overwhelming sense of dread coursing through my body. Could it be possible that I’d lost everything? All my money, my hopes, my dreams? Gone, vanished, in the blink of an eye? What would I tell my family? My kids, who I’d always planned on clothing and feeding and sending to college? How could I face them? And everyone else who depends on me? I wanted get under my bed and hide, if only to stop the quaking in my boots.

Just kidding! I have no dependents and even if I did, it wouldn’t matter, because all my money is invested in offshore accounts, frozen concentrated orange juice futures, and cocaine. Other people, however, may have not fared so well. Take the woes of this erstwhile Goldman trader, which a reader-friend was good enough to catch us up on, late last night:

“Not sure if this is on your radar, but a Goldman trader took a $1B (yes, that is $1 Billion) position in a sub-prime mortgage index last week. He was fired today after the position suffered a roughly 35% decline. I can’t verify if it was closed out yet, but the loss thus far stands at about $350M. Talk about a bad week.”