To the editor:

I have some paper. It’s about 4½ by 4 inches and very thin. Adding a second sheet to double its thickness more than doubles its value; doubling actually creates value far in excess of two separated sheets which by themselves are of questionable value at best. Not exactly a miracle.

Unfortunately, daily life is not always the best teacher in the wider world.

In the realm of real estate and banking, surprise, the analogy has exploded. Piles of worthless paper were bundled in great heaps. Post-doctoral mathematicians chanted, burned incense, danced naked around the resulting pyramids and declared them to be mounds of AAA securities.

We who are not titans of business and struggled with Algebra II know the result in our guts. We will be living it for the foreseeable future.

Somehow the stench of this massive fraud has escaped our elected representatives. They learned nothing from the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s except that virtually the same actors are a major source of campaign contributions still today.

As voters we have a choice. We can continue to elect representatives whose olfactory acuity struggles to grasp the nuances of three buck Chuck, or we can support people who will put the paper hangers in prison where they belong.

Jamie McNett

Clinton