There was a time, a little more than eight years ago, when Bill and Hillary Clinton were getting ready to leave the White House, and they and their supporters worried about how the Clintons would pay all their legal bills from the Whitewater mess, the Monica Lewinsky affair, etc, etc.

They needn't have worried. As our estimable colleague Matt Lee of the Associated Press first reported Tuesday, former president Bill Clinton raked in more than $5 million in speaking fees in 2008 alone, most of it from foreign companies and entities such as the National Bank of Kuwait and AWD Holding AG of Dusseldorf, Germany. 

Clinton's best gig was The Power Within, a Toronto-based company that conducts motivational training programs. He earned $1.25 million alone from the firm for 5 speeches last year.

In her financial disclosure statement, filed with the Office of Government Ethics, Secretary of State Clinton also listed millions of dollars in assets and income from bank deposits, life insurance policies, etc. Royalties from her book, Living History, were listed as between $50,000 and $100,000, while Bill's book,  My Life, did better, fetching between $100,000 and $1 million in royalties.

But my McClatchy colleague Greg Gordon (who went and got the 11-page document and helpfully plopped a copy on my desk) and I liked best the part about a certain "literary work" that Hillary Clinton wrote and whose royalties she is donating to the National Parks Foundation. The literary work in question? Dear Socks, Dear Buddy. Forgotten the Clinton years already? You can find the book here.