Hay guys. I have not posted on here before. Anyways...

This is more of a Brit thing really but as I understand, the states are suffering from financial issues too, what with all the banks falling down.

The price of food and fuel is rising The availability of finance is falling! And so are irresponsible financial institutions.
The over all effect is that most people will be poorer. Let me ask you something. What is the benefit of this?

It might just be an exercise in paranoia but I think it is prudent to look for a reason why the current financial climate has been engineered, if it has been engineered. Personally I think it is the result of the commercial world be too interdependent, and a few people being greedy bastards. It is also evidence of my long held belief that globalization is a terrible thing.

But if the whole crisis has been engineered I would say that it is either an effort to distract from the war or make americans vote for someone with more experience to save them from it (meaning Obama is out) or this is to reduce the general disposable income of the population who have growing interest in buying ethical food and purchasing devices to provide better freedoms. I need to plug the Pandora here. http://www.openpandora.org/

So then, what are your theories, conspiracies or paranoid delusions?

There's an old Heinlein quote I like to use at a time like this:

"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity."

I don't think this situation was engineered in so much as it has been allowed to happen by greedy folks who knew about it but didn't care, and apathetic folks who didn't know about it, didn't want to know about it, but who might have cared if they knew about it.

Another great quote from Lord of War:

"The people who care, don't know, and the people who know, don't care!"

This financial mess is all about idiots mismanaging other people's money for decades and being rewarded for it.  I don't think it's any grand conspiracy.  I think it's those decades of mismanagement coming home to roost.

In which case, the United States "Bailout" is only band-aid over cancer.

Banks are going to go under.

Things are going to get much, much worse financially.

Best advice I've been given is to take your savings and go bargain hunting for a bank with little to no mortgage exposure and invest in it, so that when the banks with high mortgage exposure go bankrupt, those who still will need banking will go to one of the banks you've invested in, thus, allowing you to actually MAKE money in this crisis.

It's not foolproof, but it's a bad plan today.

And you know what Sean Kennedy says about a Bad Plan Today...

S

So... Greenspan, who was the head of the FED while they lowered interest rates to ludicrous levels, wrote a neat little paper for his graduate thesis. Topic? Inflation, housing bubbles, and their effects. http://online.barrons.com/public/article/SB120917419049046805.html?mod=mktw Looks like he moved on to the practical application thereof. The paper was "unpublished" at his request when he took control of the FED.

Also, a little odd that the bailout "has to happen" right before Bush loses power, along with all his cronies? I am still a little surprised that more democrats are voting for it though.

Abrasive Glen Beck link, but I like Schiff. He is a shameless self promoter, but he has predicted everything perfectly for the last decade, so you have to take his predictions seriously:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/EMrQMUGxTS4&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/EMrQMUGxTS4&rel=1</a>

Math ain't that hard to learn man. Just a LOT of stupid little rules. The way they teach it in high school, I am convinced, is designed to make you abandon it. I mean, 12 years studying something where you are almost never shown a concrete application? Crazy! The other problem is that what we think of as math is usually limited to just Algebra, and it's more complicated brethren, ie: Calculus, Matrices, Vectors, Statistics, etc.

Most students don't even know about all the other great kinds of math that are at least as useful. Graph theory (this is not geometry), Sets, Lambda calculus, Decision theory, etc...

Gnash gnash gnash.

I will also quip that they are complaining that the math is hard for finance majors.... so it is probably not that bad.

Ouch. Bleak. The truth hurts though.

Eloopious: Why not teach her how to make a steal off an ebay purchase? What to look for in good items, bad items, etc..

Make it a teaching moment, where she learns the basics of adding and subtracting (from your writing, she seems a little young.  But if not make the education age appropriate.)

Nothing teaches a kid more than an involved parent?  And why not use an the auction site for some thing good.  Though there has to be ONE rule, she is not allowed to go to the site without your permission. (Watch out or she might have to upstage you at some point in her future with more wog gear? ;-)

I think using craiglist, freecycle or many other forms of free online advertisers are good ways to teach kids how to get items they may need in the future, how to barter and make the transaction a win-win situation instead of a win-lose or lose-lose situation. Plus she can learn some basic math skills and some other wonderful things.  Plus she can go out with dear old Dad to get the item or await it from the Post Office, UPS or Fed Ex.

I'll let you all come up with your own teaching and mathematical moments....

Good vid. No word on inflation though or govt manipulation of the market..

Also:

Bought Votes
http://www.maplight.org/node/43109

Actually, the problem is that it never existed. It was lent via fractional reserve, and was all credit. Money can, and often does, just evaporate.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking

In essence the process was:

• Create a mortgage for value X with 1/10X reserves from bank depositors
• Repeat process hundreds of times to create enough mortgages to securitize (turn into bonds)
• Sell these bonds to another institution which uses them to back more mortgages
• Repeat from step one, but with 10X the $$$ you originally had as deposits, then 100x, then 1000x, etc...

If this looks like a Ponzi scheme to you, go to the head of the class! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi