There are plenty of dollars, it turns out, to buy all the goodies the federal government has to sell. The President of the United States himself was astonished by how many dollars had been scattered over the world through the years. It was as though he had told everybody on the planet, "Please rake your yard and send the leaves to me."

There was a photograph on an inside page of the Daily News yesterday of a dock in Brooklyn. There was about an acre of bales that looked like cotton on the dock. These were actually bales of American currency from Saudi Arabia, cash on the barrelhead, so to speak, for the McDonald's Hamburgers Division of RAMJAC.

The headline said this: "HOME AT LAST!"

Who is the lucky owner of all those bales? The people of the United States, according to the will of Mary Kathleen O'-Looney.

What, in my opinion, was wrong with Mary Kathleen's scheme for a peaceful economic revolution? For one thing, the federal government was wholly unprepared to operate all the businesses of RAMJAC on behalf of the people. For another thing: Most of those businesses, rigged only to make profits, were as indifferent to the needs of the people as, say, thunderstorms. Mary Kathleen might as well have left one-fifth of the weather to the people. The businesses of RAMJAC, by their very nature, were as unaffected by the joys and tragedies of human beings as the rain that fell on the night that Madeiros and Sacco and Vanzetti died in an electric chair. It would have rained anyway.

The economy is a thoughtless weather system — and nothing more.

Some joke on the people, to give them such a thing.

There was a supper party given in my honor last week — a "going away party," you might say. It celebrated the completion of my last full day at the office. The host and hostess were Leland Clewes and his lovely wife Sarah. They have not moved out of their basement apartment in Tudor City, nor has Sarah given up private nursing, although Leland is now pulling down about one hundred thousand dollars a year at RAMJAC. Much of their money goes to the Foster Parents Program, a scheme that allows them to support individual children in unfortunate circumstances in many parts of the world. They are supporting fifty children, I think they said. They have letters and photographs from several of them, which they passed around.

I am something of a hero to certain people, which is a novelty. I single-handedly extended the life of RAMJAC by two years and a little more. If I had not concealed the will of Mary Kathleen, those at the party would never have become vice-presidents of RAMJAC. I myself would have been thrown out on my ear — to become what I expect to be anyway, if I survive my new prison term, which is a shopping-bag man.

Am I broke again? Yes. My defense has been expensive. Also: My Watergate lawyers have caught up with me. I still owe them a lot for all they did for me.

Clyde Carter, my former guard in Georgia and now a vice-president of the Chrysler Air Temp Division of RAMJAC, was there with his lovely wife Claudia. He did a side-splitting imitation of his cousin the President, saying, "I will never lie to you," and promising to rebuild the South Bronx and so on.

Frank Ubriaco was there with his lovely new wife Marilyn, who is only seventeen. Frank is fifty-three. They met at a discotheque. They seem very happy. She said that what attracted her to him at first was that he wore a white glove on only one hand. She had to find out why. He told her at first that the hand had been burned by a Chinese communist flame thrower during the Korean War, but later admitted that he had done it to himself with a Fry-o-lator. They have started a collection of tropical fish. They have a coffee table that contains tropical fish.

Frank invented a new sort of cash register for the McDonald's Hamburgers Division. It was getting harder all the time to find employees who understood numbers well, so Frank took the numbers off the keys of the cash register and substituted pictures of hamburgers and milkshakes and French fries and Coca-Colas and so on. The person totting up a bill would simply punch the pictures of the various things a customer had ordered, and the cash register would add it up for him.

Frank got a big bonus for that.

My guess is that the Saudis will keep him on.

There was a telegram to me from Dr. Robert Fender, still in prison in Georgia. Mary Kathleen had wanted RAMJAC to make him a vice-president, too, but there was no way to get him out of prison. Treason was just too serious a crime. Clyde Carter had written to him that I was going back to prison myself, and that there was going to be a party for me, and that he should send a telegram.

This was all it said: "Ting-a-ling."

That was from his science-fiction story about the judge from the planet Vicuna, of course, who had to find a new body to occupy, and who flew into my ear down there in Georgia, and found himself stuck to my feelings and destiny until I died.

According to the judge in the story, that was how they said both hello and good-bye on Vicuna: "Ting-a-ling."

"Ting-a-ling" was like the Hawaiian "aloha," which also means both hello and good-bye.

"Hello and good-bye." What else is there to say? Our language is much larger than it needs to be.

I asked Clyde if he knew what Fender was working on now.

"A science-fiction novel about economics," said Clyde.

"Did he say what pseudonym he's going to use?" I said.

" 'Kilgore Trout,' " said Clyde.

My devoted secretary, Leora Borders, and her husband, Lance, were there. Lance was just getting over a radical mastectomy. He told me that one mastectomy in two hundred was performed on a man. Live and learn!

There were several other RAMJAC friends who should have been there, but dared not come. They feared that their reputations, and hence their futures as executives, might be tainted if it were known that, they were friendly with me.

There were telegrams from other people I had had to my famous little parties — John Kenneth Galbraith and Salvador Dali and Erica Jong and Liv Ullmann and the Flying Farfans and on and on.

Robert Redford's telegram, I remember, said this: "Hang tough."

The telegrams were something less than spontaneous. As Sarah Clewes would admit under questioning, she had been soliciting them all week long.

Arpad Leen sent a spoken message through Sarah, which was meant for my ears alone: "Good show." That could be taken a million different ways.

He was no longer presiding over the dismemberment of RAMJAC, incidentally. He had been hired away by American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which had just been bought by a new company in Monaco named BIBEC. Nobody has been able to find out who or what BIBEC is, so far. Some people think it's the Russians.

At least I will have some real friends outside of prison this time.

There was a bowl of yellow tulips on the table for a centerpiece. It was April again.

It was raining outside. Nature sympathized.

I was seated at the place of honor — to the right of my hostess, of Sarah Clewes, the nurse. Of the four women I ever loved, she was always the easiest one to talk to. That may be because I had never promised her anything, and so had never let her down. Oh, Lord — the things I used to promise my mother and my poor wife and poor Mary Kathleen!

Young Israel Edel and his not-so-lovely wife Norma were there. I say that she was not-so-lovely for the simple reason that she has always hated me. I don't know why. I have never insulted her, and she is certainly as pleased as Punch with the upturn her husband's career has taken. He would still be a night clerk, if it weren't for me. The Edels are renovating a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights with all the money he makes. Still — every time she looks at me, I feel like something the cat dragged in. It is just one of those things. I think she may be slightly crazy. She miscarried twins about a year ago. That might have something to do with it. She may have some sort of chemical imbalance as a result of that. Who knows?