IF LIFE hands you lemons, goes the old saying, make lemonade. Not a bad summary there of opportunistic entrepreneurial capitalism, God bless it.

It's the one system that can turn adversity into cash (although system is overstating it; capitalism is essentially just human nature with price tags attached, so we can keep score).

By contrast, when socialists are handed lemons, they make them party officials.

But aggressive, dynamic, lemonade-making adversity-profiting capitalists are now overtaken by an even more wily crowd.

Instead of passively waiting for bad news to strike before creating a get-rich response, this bunch first creates the bad news.

They're handing lemons to themselves (and us). It's almost a form of insider trading.

Al Gore, for instance, claimed to be worth just $US2 million in 2000, the year he lost his bid for the US Presidency to George W. Bush.