Years ago, David Letterman was doing his show from Las Vegas for a week, and, as he walked out of his hotel one night, he ran into a raggedy man who asked him for $5 for food. Letterman said, “How do I know you won’t spend it gambling?” and the guy says, “Oh, I got gambling money!”

That joke gets less and less funny every time I read about banks that have received billions of dollars from taxpayers.

“How do we know you won’t spend this bailout money on bonuses to the people who ran this bank into the dirt in the first place?”

“Oh, don’t worry, we got bonus money!”

It gets less and less funny when you read that the “financial adviser” who parachuted out of his plane, leaving it to crash on autopilot, had declared personal bankruptcy twice before and has left four different brokerage firms under a cloud in 10 years. You’d think little things like that would disqualify him from being a licensed financial adviser, except at a craps table.

“How do I know you won’t buy a million-dollar plane instead of investing my money in the stock market?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I got plane money!”