Anybody ever been time out and lost their work? I just was. Mustn't be too reflective while typing.

Tonight I make baked beans including Great Northern beans, Romano Beans and Scarlet Runner beans from my last year's garden. There will be some bacon and molasses. Thank you, John Crosby and your family for your enduring contribution to Canadian culture.

Mr. Haggis, I am relieved that you are a Navy lifer, for you have one of the most secure pensions in the Western hemisphere, and then there are your pensions from the Canadian entitlement programs, CPP and OAS. Hang in there buddy, you are actually doing relatively well. Your financial advisor, if he still lives, may be living off contributions from food banks.

As far as Madoff and Enron go, they are token Perps. Basically run up the flag pole so "justice may be seen to be done". They represent nothing significant in the global flim flam ponzi scheme that resulted in the 2007-8 debt bubble. Who from Wall Street or Bay Street went to jail for the biggest scam in history? Where are Jamie Dimond, Lloyd Blankfien, Timothy Geitner, the Goldman Sachs eschelons and a host of others who profited big time off the misery of millions of people? They are free and more prosperous than ever.

Venezuela and Crystallex were far removed from this craziness which originated in North America and Wall Street. We were actually an accident. We couldn't see what was coming in Venequela and we were ill prepared when it hit us.

Here's my two most important lessons which I take from the Crystallex disaster;

1) Never invest in a company where management doesn't own equity up to its ears and its own butts aren't on the line.

2) Never discount geopolitical risk because North America is not typical of the rest of the world Geopolitical risk is real risk.

thelongrunner