One day a couple of months ago, we were walking through Times Square, and we passed a panhandler with a cardboard sign. It read: "Britney Spears's sister is pregnant, and I need money for a present." We didn't chip in (girl does not need the encouragement), but we appreciated the effort, in a current-events-class-from-fifth-grade kind of way. We feel similarly about this Soho vendor's efforts to insert his bubble-gun business into the greater economic picture. Sidewalk shillers making market predictions? What's next, hookers using finance terms in dead languages?

Oh, wait.