Ugh. Using the word Nuke-u-lar is not the way to make people think you are a smart person and ready for office. How hard is this? I mean, really.

I'm glad you called yourself a racist about the mortgages before I had to do it for you. (as an aside, I vaguely remember a debate about making car inspections mandatory in California, but those that were for such a measure were also racist.)

Speaking of blame, enjoy the following 3-minute video:
http://www.bercasio.com/movies/dems-wmd-before-iraq.wmv

Changing the subject...

I can't believe C is 9! However, she was born about a month after G and I got married, so 9 it must be. Which is still a WOW kind of moment.

You can never, I say never, spend too much at a library sale. Unless you're spending the grocery money, you are on solid ground.

And if you are spending the grocery money...well, pancakes for supper are very cheap and easy.

I just surfed by from a google alert, but I thought you might be interested in this post. There just weren't enough bad loans to minorities to have caused the crisis all on their own. Also, the law in question is 30 years old. There is no reason for it to suddenly cause a crisis.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/09/did-minority-le.html

Mr./Ms. Anonymous (I like to own my words, but that's just me):

1) Of *course* it wasn't *just* loans to minorities that caused the problem. It wasn't even *just* all the other risky loans that were handed out to minorities and others. But that's a substantial part of the issue, combined with a housing bubble that popped at a really inopportune time, when all those risky loans (which partially caused the bubble in and of themselves) were floating around. If you're holding a 3-year ARM and planning on refinancing before the rates jump, but you can't because your home isn't worth what you owe on it anymore, that's a problem. Just as one example.

2) The genesis of the program was in 1977, yes, but it was the Clinton administration that ramrodded enforcement of it as well as making a lot of "reforms" aimed at making sure that more minorities could purchase homes -- *forcing* banks to pass out loans that went against their better financial judgment. Yes, other low- to middle-income families benefited from this as well. We're one, as a matter of fact, not that we're about to default on our no-down-payment mortgage. We caught it just at the end, a year ago now.

I say the economy is in the hole because of all the illegal immigrants...Wait now THAT'S racist. So I'm a racist. What.

I thought Palin was cute but her cuteness and lack of political posh is all a face she's putting on to gain the popularity she so desires - hey we all gotta do somethin' right? "Say it ain't so Joe!"

I personally enjoyed the Vice Presidential debate most but both were thoroughly educational and interesting in my opinion.

Palin's cuteness is an act, but Obama's eager idealism and boyish innocence are totally genuine, right? :-)

I think the economy's in the tank for a lot of reasons, and the bummer is, it'll be VERY, very hard to fix with most of our blue-collar jobs overseas or, yes, held by non-taxpayers who will work under-the-table and send most of the money home to Mexico. (Second-greatest source of outside income for the nation of Mexico, after oil exports? Money sent home by immigrants. I am so not making that up.) It's hard to stimulate the economy when there's that huge gap between manufacturing and the tax base. In 1985, if you gave tax breaks to the rich (eeevil, eeeevil plan, of course; those people don't DESERVE to keep more than a third of their money), they would use the money to a) build their businesses, thus hiring their less-wealthy neighbors and stimulating the economy, and/or b) invest, hence stimulating the economy, and/or c) buy rich-boy toys like yachts and big-screen TVs, hence creating work for manufacturers and stimulating the economy. Now if they build their businesses, they'll just build them overseas and stimulate the Asian economy; if they invest, it'll create a false bubble because investment will outpace the real value of the companies; if they buy rich-boy toys, again, nobody in the U.S. is benefited by that. Yet if you steal their money like FDR did in the 30's (top marginal tax bracket was, what, 95% in the middle of the century?) to fix what's broken, you take away much of their incentive to do the things that make them so much money in the first place.

We are in a big, bad, cruddy situation; even my spotty economics education can tell me that. And the old ways of fixing it won't do us any good. My one-semester-of-high-school-econ solution? Tax breaks for corporations IF some certain huge percentage of their labor force are legal American residents or citizens, and if all their manufacturing/offices/whatever are within U.S. borders. Nationalistic? Yes. But we need some nationalism if we're going to make it through this century without becoming a pawn of whoever buys up our stock market and banking when it's down.

I agree that outsourcing is also the problem. A big part.

The trickle down effect makes total sense in theory. Unfortunately those wealthy corporate businessmen don't hire their less-wealthy neighbors at a reasonable living wage and on top of it treat them like indentured servants. The poor are kept poor and the rich get richer and eventually there is civil unrest and then the people rise and take what is theirs. It is from the sweat and broken dreams of the working class that the gold of the rich gleams.

And yes I do believe Obama's idealism is genuine. I do not see boyish innocence at all though. In all honesty - I've always resented the "People don't know what's best, we do" mentality and this sudden about-face salute of McCain to the middle class is laughable.

That's just my opinion though - I love you no matter what - I am not trying to be mean or condescending here and I truly hope you don't think I am.

This comment is inspiring me to write a blog.

*Sitting nervously biting nails, hoping that best friend won't hate her*

Well, the gold of the rich also gleams from the self-owned homes, new-every-five-years cars, forty-year blue-collar careers, and college-educated children of the mostly-contented, upwardly motivated working class. Not to mention the stereotypical guy who starts out in the mailroom and ends up an executive -- not only does HIS gold gleam eventually, but along the way he contributes to the wealth of the people for whom he worked as well. There's no shame in that; it's a win-win situation. You can't say it doesn't happen anymore, because it does, although much, much less often now that (again I beat my favorite dead horse) there's that giant gap between minimum-wage and executive wage in so many industries whose labor force lives much more cheaply overseas. BRING BACK AMERICAN LABOR. I would gladly pay $300 for a printer and save up $2000 to buy a computer from an American company if it meant that Americans had those jobs back. I didn't always feel this way, to be honest... I was seduced by the reduced commodity prices when the first wave of them hit. But I've come to realize that the reduced prices come at too high a cost, for me personally.

Anyway, back to that gleaming gold. If there were no wealthy executives, there would never be enough jobs to go around. Unless, of course, you go to a completely socialistic system where the government owns everything and hence employs (or subsidizes) everyone, and that worked SO WELL in the USSR, didn't it. Bread lines! So much fun. Unmotivated labor force killing themselves with homemade vodka out of despair! Awesome. Just what we need.

Blog your heart out. I think we're both grown-up enough to continue to like each other even if we disagree. :)

I think if we were totally self-reliant (And not in a "lets use up all our resources with no regard for future generations" kind of way) on energy, product manufacturing, etc., to bring jobs back to the American people it would be a great start.

The gap between minimum-wage and executive wage is gross. I am a college educated, hard working American who is breaking her back for $12.50 an hour (And in Los Angeles that would be the equivalent of minimum wage everywhere else) while the local coked up baseball player gets milions of dollars a year for what - to hit a freaking ball?

That's just one example of why the freedom to make as much money as you want is twisted in my opinion. Teachers fight for a living wage while politicians are s c r e w i n g prostitutes and wasting our tax dollars.

The economy is screwed up for many reasons as we've discussed - one of those reasons is the lack of morals and values among the greedy - who have no problem stepping on the less fortunate in order to drive their mercedes and have the opportunity to say they have so many houses they can't even count them.

I think it's ludicrous, yes, that anyone is paid six figures (and up) because of the ability to hit a ball, or run with a ball, or throw a ball through a hoop, or pretend really well in front of cameras, or be really skinny and look good in designer clothes. The fact that we as a culture value these "skills" enough to support such excesses is a pretty good indicator that our cultural values suck -- that's no surprise. Especially since we look to those same people (the skinny ones who pretend in front of cameras for a living, mostly) to tell us how to think and what to believe. They're in the public eye, ergo they are worth listening to? It's total BS.

No doubt there are a lot of wealthy people who are unethical. However, wealth in and of itself is not a measure of corruption. Not all wealthy people are eeeevil. I would say most aren't. Some are genuinely good people -- read a biography of R.G. LeTourneau, for example, or look at what the Gettys have done with their millions. There are thousands and thousands of poor people who are equally unethical (oh my gosh the welfare fraud, just as one example), but it's a lot easier to throw rocks at the rich because they're on such a visible pedestal and because they have something that everyone else wants and doesn't have. "If I can't have it, I don't want them to have it either," is a pretty crappy and childish attitude.

I personally have no desire for wealth. I'd be most happy if I could learn to manage what I have efficiently, to live small on my own land, and to continue to wring every bit of enjoyment out of my thoroughly blessed life. But I'm not about to try to criminalize those with the desire, drive, determination and ingenuity that brings (legitimate) financial success. That's not my business, and even more, where would private industry be without entrepreneurs who build companies that can write John Doe's paychecks and provide innovative services? We can't *all* be government employees.

True, not all rich people are corrupt - and there are corrupt poor people. But the fact of the matter is the percentage of rich people that help out the poor is too small. I don't think people shouldn't have the right to get rich. Lord knows I'd love to never have to work for another person again in my life. But if I were rich I would consider it to be my duty to make sure I was helping out as many people as I can. I wouldn't waste my money on things I don't need and then tell my employees I can't afford to give them a raise. I wouldn't buy 10 cars and then tell my delivery guy he has to use his own car. I wouldn't spend thousands of dollars on a vacation and then tell my employees I can't afford to give them paid vacations. I have worked for these types of people since I was 14 years old and in all these jobs I have never met one good rich person.

I too have no *desire* for wealth. I would be perfectly happy if my husband worked a decent job making decent money and I could stay home and raise a family on a modest budget, living in a small cottage in the hills. I have rich friends - people who make over $500 a day just sitting on a computer making things look pretty for someone else - but they don't live beyond their means, they help out those in need and they stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves. The mentally unstable, the elderly, those who can't work and get rich no matter how strong their work ethic might be.

Did we have a debate team in high school? We should have been on it :-) I wish we could be having this conversation over some starbucks face to face. Miss you much.

Thank you so much for not making me feel like I'm a hateful, ignorant person for not thinking like you - I get too much of that.

Definitely the best employers are the ones who realize that a) employees are people too, not a disposable commodity to be chewed up and spat out when used up and b) a happy workforce is a loyal, hardworking, enthusiastic workforce. The shining example of that would be Google, with its almost ridiculously awesome quality-of-life employee perqs. (On-site *laundry?* Wow.) Unfortunately, Google gets some obscenely high number of resumés each DAY, so chances for most people of getting on there are rather slim. But I really would love to see more companies learn from their example and voluntarily go the extra mile to treat employees well. Certainly there are a lot of companies where, as you say, waste and excess are common at the executive level while lower-level employees get the shaft, and that just stinks.

Rachel, you're absolutely right that the Republicans are not only to blame for the current economic problems. Nonetheless, given that they're happening eight years into the current administration - and that the previous admin had actually had surplus instead of deficit years - I do think they bear a lot of the blame. Even those shaky loans - if the Clinton administration pushed them, they've continued a lot longer than that. And if it was a bad decision (my economic background is also too shaky to be sure) well, a sound economy can absorb a lot of those. A teetering economy like the one we have now can't. THere is plenty of blame to go around for that, on both sides of the aisle.

The money we've been squandering overseas in the Iraq war is one of the biggest problems, to my mind. The thing that scares me most about the bailout is the amount we're borrowing from China. Not that I think we should pull out of Iraq without being very, very careful how we do it. There never was a truer statement than Colin Powell's "You break it, you bought it." But I do think a lot of the reason we went into that war (instead of concentrating on Afghanistan, which war I do agree with) was Bush's desire to gain more glory than his father.

There certainly are rich people who have done good things with their money I can't condone all of Blil Gates' business practices, but I'm pretty happy with what he's done with his money. And as for the umpty-million-dollar house? He's welcome to it, compared to the amount he's given away. I also like Richard Branson, who has done some charity but has mostly focused his money on the sorts of exciting high-tech projects (like Spaceship One) that used to be done only with tax dollars.

I *don't* agree that illegal immigration or outsourcing are our worst problems. For the former, they've actuallly tried getting welfare recipients to do some of those fruit-picking jobs. They refused - the work was just too hard. But I don't approve of people hiring illegals to save on tax / social security expenses, so I'd favor something like a guest worker program. As for outsourcing, I've seen it up close and personal. My last several jobs have been based on working with people all over the world. I've seen pretty convincing figures that those prosperous companies have ended up creating more US jobs than they lose, and I believe them because mine have been among those jobs. The transition can be painful, though, because the job we gain is not the same as the job that is lost, and people do need to learn new skills sometimes. I've seen times (late 1990s) when we were bringing in "knowledge workers" (legally) from China and India because there were simply not enough programmers to hire in the US. And those people either stay, becoming Americans and bringing expertise into the country, or go home, with the tastes for an American lifestyle they've acquired, bringing American products and chains into their home countries. When I go to a TGI Fridays here in Taipei, some of the money I spend is still being sent back to the US for the franchise, recipe development, etc.

As for socialism, the one thing I can say is that I've experienced the ones in the Netherlands and Taiwan. Both seem to work for their countries and in both places people are mostly happy with their systems. But they're not the same. One thing the US needs to do is look around the world at the hundreds of systems, see what works and what doesn't, think about how our own people work (and we Americans do think differently about these things than Dutch or Taiwanese people) and then apply those lessons. But we also need to be very careful, because it is true that a high percentage of medical advances come from that same flawed US system and no one can afford to stifle that.

Sorry for the very long answer. The most interesting point for me has been seeing how very many points we agree on despite very different perspectives. Treating workers like actual people, yay.