Aw, nuts.

I've figured it out. You know, how to fix the economy? Yep. It's true that I'm kind of a genius (ignore those who say savant), but I amazed even myself when this brilliant plan struck me in the baking aisle of the grocery store yesterday.

You know how we can do it? Turn the whole mess around? With pecans.

I mean, I bought a 4-cup bag for over $10 yesterday, so clearly it's a valuable commodity. Especially considering the pecans were on sale from their normal $13 price for the same bag. These nuts have a greater street value per ounce than any black market drug and you don't even have to live in a crack house to sell or use them.

But we should. Can you imagine how much their value would jump from their current more-precious-than-gold price point if we outlawed pecans? A whole black market would spring up around the buying and selling of these little gems. And we could dominate the international market just by having Angelina Jolie and Will Smith play characters who eat the contraband nuts casually, as a sign of their characters' great wealth and total disregard for the law. Ooh, or maybe have Paris Hilton carry some around in a pink Louis Vuitton bag. People would go crazy and seek pecans like never before. There would be a run on the world pecan market as people bought them in alleys, scurrying away with their little plastic bags of pecans.

And the beautiful thing is...the U.S. government would secretly be controlling the pecan black market and so they could take all the money from the DEA agents posing undercover as pecan dealers, the pecan/crack shacks that would now be a better bet than banks as cash clearing houses, and the street dealers that are really vice cops from local precincts. Since only our government would know about the pecan ban beforehand, we would spend a year or so buidling up our pecan groves in the hidden back country on the outskirts of the smallest hick towns and then we would totally dominate the supply of pecans worldwide.

The only part I haven't figured out yet is what to do when the Big 3 automakers come to Congress with a proposal to use pecans as an alternative fuel for vehicles and ask for several billion in funding to make that dream a reality and then they get the money and blow it all on paying shareholder dividends and then come back and ask for more.

But at least I figured out the cash flow side. I still gotta think about the Congress thing a little bit more.

All I know is that these damn pecans better give me magical properties at $10 a bag.