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!”

Bernie Madoff is under house arrest in his $7 million Park Avenue apartment because he allegedly swindled $50 billion from investors. Now he says he’s broke. I don’t know what you mean when you say you’re broke, but I know what I mean. It means I have no money. It means I’ve cut back, I’ve scrimped, I’ve gotten rid of everything of value. If it weren’t for my worthless car and a fleabag hotel I’d be out on the street.

What Madoff means by “broke” is that he has nine other multi-million-dollar homes, four boats and three luxury cars. They found $173 million in checks in his desk drawer that he was ready to put in the mail right before he was arrested. It won’t make a dent in $50 billion, but you’d think he could make the effort.