SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- It was just another night at Sam's Anchor Cafe on San Francisco Bay, when a spacecraft suddenly appeared overhead and deposited a rumpled-looking figure in a Yankee hat on the outside deck.

"Where am I," said the man, clutching a Wall Street Journal dated Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2000, as the jaws of the regulars at the bar dropped into their beers. "Last thing I remember, I was on my way to the polling place on East 14th Street to vote for Ralph Nader. Then a blinding flash of light, and now I'm here."

"You better sit down and have a drink," I told him. "You're not in New York. You're in the Bay Area, and you've missed an entire year. It's the day after Election Day -- 2001."

"You're kidding. How can that be? My day-trading account will have expired. Oh well, should be OK, I was long Cisco, Lucent and Enron. Anyway, how'd Nader do?"

"He got crushed," I said. "But he took just enough votes to cost Gore the election, almost, well sort of. You see, it was kind of a tie."

"A tie? How can a presidential election be a tie? Who's the president?

"Well, Bush is president, and we're happy about that -- finally, we think. You see, the election was so close that the country basically came to a halt for two months, and split into two opposing sides accusing each other of stealing, cheating and general crookedness. Finally, the Supreme Court had to step in, declaring Bush the winner and the Constitution null and void. It also outlawed the name Chad."

"Bush, huh," he said. "Well, must be good for the stock market at least."

"Not really, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (: news, chart, profile) is down about 1,500 points since this time last year, and the Nasdaq (: news, chart, profile) been cut in half. Even the so-called Bush stocks have taken a hit. Stocks like AOL Time Warner (AOL: news, chart, profile), Yahoo(YHOO: news, chart, profile), and Microsoft (MSFT: news, chart, profile), which were supposed to benefit from a less regulatory regime, are all much lower since the last election.

However, some issues -- the sin stocks -- like tobacco companies Philip Morris (MO: news, chart, profile) and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco (RJR: news, chart, profile) have had nice gains. And shares of ChevronTexaco (CVX: news, chart, profile), the first big oil merger under the new Texan-led regime, are also up.

But generally, it's been a miserable year, for stocks and the economy. More than 1.6 million people lost their jobs, and it looks like we're in a recession."

"But where was Greenspan during all this?" the man asked, starting to perspire and turning his cap around. "Last I saw, he was raising interest rates to stop the runaway growth."

"Well, he went a little too far down that road," I said. "He finally started cutting rates in January and now we can't stop him. He's cut 10 times to the point where rates are as low as they were during the Kennedy administration. But it hasn't helped a lick. Nobody's spending. Probably to do with the war."

"War? We're at war? With who?

"We're not sure. This guy in a cave in Afghanistan blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and ... "

"Wait," he said. "I need another drink. Did you say the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?"

"Yeah, and now we're at war with him, along with terrorism and evil in general. We're making progress, but there's a lot of evil out there, as you know. We've got soldiers on our bridges and in our airports, and we're all on medication to prevent bio-terrorism. Other than that, things are pretty normal."

"What's happened to New York? How is Rudy doing?

"Rudy's not mayor anymore. They elected Michael Bloomberg."

"The computer guy? With the financial stuff? What does he know about politics?"

"No one's sure. But he's got a lot of dough. That's how you win these campaigns these days. Sure would've helped Nader."

"So in addition to missing an entire year and not knowing what happened, I'm now stuck on the West Coast, my city and country have been attacked, stocks are in the tank, we're in a recession, we're at war, and Michael Bloomberg is the second most-powerful man in the country."

"Yep. You missed quite a year."

"Well, at least I still have my Yankees."

"Umm, let me get you another drink