As the Placebo President, George Woops Bush, winds down the great American nightmare that started with an election he didn’t win and concludes with the whole world losing, his administration continues to the end to miss opportunities. Having lost the War on Terror, Washington is hardly doing any better fighting the War on Error that can’t be bought off for even $700 billion.

You’d think Yerevan is far enough outside the D.C. Beltway to be spared the shrapnel of an imploding empire built on greed and deception. But no. My Erebuni beer (the “Official Beer of ArmeniaNow”, should market distributors be reading) now costs 350 drams – nearly 30 percent more than three years ago – and I’m not blaming beer-making oligarch parliamentarian arm wrestler Gagik Tsarukyan. No sir, I’m dropping the mug at W’s doorstep.

Isolated in nearly every way from the rest of the real world, lonely little Armenia some how pops up on the radar when it comes to being penalized for others’ mistakes. (Remember petrol lines when the clown in Georgia crossed the bear in Russia this August?)

Like in the US, here we’ve had men in office who got there by illegitimate means. But at least Serzh Sargsyan and Robert Kocharyan have turned out double-digit growth while Gevorg Bushyan and Tigran Cheneyan flushed their country down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s toilet.

To digress: If a country’s financial liability rests on the performance of institutions with names that sound like cartoon characters, couldn’t even someone as vacant as “the Decider” see a crack in the foundation?

Anyway. I suppose all of us in ear-shot of CNN have heard Wall Street’s Humpty Dumpty impersonation played out to the “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” tune of $700 billion. And if you share my curiosity, we try to comprehend: What would that many dollars – 700,000,000,000 buy? That’s 210,000,000,000,000 drams. I don’t even know what to call that number, so I call it 600 billion Erebunis.

At the current average rate (per square meter of land), Fanny and Freddie could have bought the entire expanse of Armenia, and had approximately $20 billion left.

$700 billion is $233,333 for each person “officially” claimed in the Armenian population. During the latest presidential election here, it would have bought 42 billion votes (President Serzh needed only 862 thousand).

Laid end-to-end, the number of kebabs you could buy with $700 billion would reach 79,545,454 miles – from Proshian Street to Mars, with 369 million kebabs left over – give or take a couple.

The amount would buy 700 million one-way tickets to Glendale.

The Republic of Armenia Government could run for 35 years at its current budget on $700 billion.

And at one a day (like the doctor recommends), I could have Erebuni until I am 1,643,835,616 years old. Unless the price goes up again. That’s why I’m voting democrat.

I knew if I stayed here long enough, I could find a way that even I could vote for change in Armenia.