Political ads...

[raz]

...... Because CA has the most electoral college votes and members in the congress, what happens in CA eventually happens in the rest of the country.......

.... against my belief that the few should not be allowed to make decisions on the many.

I find this rather funny since the "few" influencing the "many" statement contradicts itself here since the number of votes in the electoral college is directly linked to the population in that state. You have a couple decent points on the current financial market, but there's a lot more to it than that and I think you know it. I don't blame the banks alone for our current financial state, but rather the average idiot (my parents fall into this category) that borrowed more money than they could pay back then defaulted on loans. Maybe they shouldn't have ever been offered the loan, but the blame goes to both parties.

[hardcoded]

I liked the ads.

They allowed me to transfer money from someone I didn't like to someone I do. Not too often can I do so in such a straightforward manner.

[Tsunami]

...... Because CA has the most electoral college votes and members in the congress, what happens in CA eventually happens in the rest of the country.......

.... against my belief that the few should not be allowed to make decisions on the many.

I find this rather funny since the "few" influencing the "many" statement contradicts itself here since the number of votes in the electoral college is directly linked to the population in that state. You have a couple decent points on the current financial market, but there's a lot more to it than that and I think you know it. I don't blame the banks alone for our current financial state, but rather the average idiot (my parents fall into this category) that borrowed more money than they could pay back then defaulted on loans. Maybe they shouldn't have ever been offered the loan, but the blame goes to both parties.

1. CA has 55 electoral college votes, the next president only needs 270. so CA represent 20% of the total number of electoral votes needed to be the next president. Since you only need 1 vote more than your opponent to take the state and get those votes, CA has more influence than any other state. Yes CA has more people and therefore more electoral votes, but that is assuming everyone votes. voter turn out is historically about 50% of the eligable voters, the winner of 55 electoral votes could be decided by a relatively small percent of the population of CA. In texas, 5 million more voters could vote for McCain than obama, but McCain still only gets 34 electoral votes. but in CA 1,000 more voters could vote Obama and Obama gets 55.

2. the current economic mess isn't because your parents can't pay for their home loan. home foreclosures are still within historic levels reached in the 90's. that is not the problem. the problem is much more complicated than that. what happened was banks didn't want to hold the home loan till maturity and make money slowly, they wanted to make profits today so they sold those loans to investment banks. the investment banks than bundled 1,000's of home loans together, than divided the value of those homes up and sold 100's of bonds based on the future cash flow of those mortgages. (still with me). many money markets, pension funds, endowment funds, banks, and private investment firms bought these bonds because they were told they were as safe as t-bills and could be sold anytime they wanted. what went wrong was house values went down, but home values don't go evenly. homes in florida dropped 30% in one year while homes in ohio dropped less than 10%. the mixture of sub-prime, prime and jumbo loans tied to those bonds is unknown to the bond holder and therefore the future cash flow for that bond is unknown. there is no one to sell these bonds to, so you need to take the hit to your balance sheet, which causes you to add cash to balance the loss. the cash needs to come from someplace, so banks stopped loaning money to you and me and to each other. there is more too it than this, but in a nut shell there was not enough restraint in the leaders of these companies to say no to easy profits.

got to go for now, wife threat meter is off the charts.

[raz]

Hehe, the problem with internet message boards is that users generally assume (often correctly) that the others on the board are generally ignorant to the world and not as well informed as themselves. This combined with the fact that you can't encompass any real conversations of any depth into a quick post makes for a difficult discussion. I didn't say that the current financial crisis is because of people defaulting on their mortgages, but rather said that there are multiple parties to blame for it. If no one defaulted on their mortgages or credit card debt I'd still be wary of many of the practices of the larger financial institutions based on the facts you stated above (which I'd assume because of the nature of the people on this board mostly understand). I'd even go as far as to say that those investing in the mortgage bonds are to blame for their inadequate research into what they're investing in. I don't blame others for the hundreds of k I lost in investments over the last few months as I know I've put much of my investments in places where there is risk of devaluation as well as "risk" of massive gains.

I was just a bit surprised at what looked like a prejudice against people who live in a particular area. I moved out to the Bay area (San Jose area) ~7 years ago and it's really strange how different the political landscape is here compared to the Midwest where I grew up. There are a ton of people out here who have great ideals/ideas, but lack much of the knowledge of how what they'd like to see may impact other aspects of the economy/environment, etc etc. I personally hate the fact that anyone with a few million to burn can get a proposition on the general election ballot and change the state constitution through deceptive advertising. In the current election I'm referring more to the environmental/transportation bills headed up by those who would most profit financially from their passing than to prop 8. Many news reports I've seen fail to mention that they were backed financially to the tune of 10's of millions by the people who will make many times that if they pass. The problem is that many voters really don't take the time to learn about what they're voting for and base their opinions on the advertisements on TV and radio which are frankly horribly skewed on both sides of every issue.

[Tsunami]

raz, i think we are in agreement on almost everything, and you have reinforced my original post and my second post defending my original position.

now for a little clarity, everyone is to blame for the crisis, u.s. citizens, congress, s.e.c., the fed, congress, pres. bush, henry paulson, fdic, moody's, S&P, fitch, unregulated mortgage originating companies, congress, home builders, local gov't and many more. but loan defaults are part of the banks accounting and under normal circumstances the rate of defaults can be absorbed.

to give an example of CA effecting the rest of the country, just look at cigarette smoking and second hand smoke killing 50k+ a year. (for the record i don't smoke nor does anyone in my family) in the late 1990's a report was issued by the FDA investigating cigarette smoking and it's relationship with cancer. two years later a follow up report was issued where in one line of one paragraph of a 30+ page report, the author commented that second hand smoke COULD be the cause of 1/10 of 1% of the deaths caused by smoking. that one line in a report changed the nation. at the time 500k+ people were dying from cancer so that could mean 5k people died each year from second hand smoke. this number grew each year until it reached the 50-70K number because 5k was not enough to change laws. second hand smoke was the reason to eliminate smoking on airplanes, than gov't building, than public building. than state wide and now it is nationwide. in some areas i think you cannot smoke outside your house because the smoke might drift into the neighbors yard, instantly killing the entire family. so if 50k people died each year that would mean that 10% of smoking related death was from second hand smoke not .1% originally posted.

now most people will say this false reporting of a gov't document and creation of misleading data benefited everyone, but i say the real threat with activist and their causes is once activated they don't de-activate. the anti smoking groups are now organized, well funded and looking for a new cause. maybe the next cause they come after will be a cause you care about. maybe even the addictive and anti-social world of MMORPG.

so flame on- it's 4am here, i got a full pot of coffee and staying up until we elect either the black guy or the old white guy.

[raz]

I fully agree that CA has some interesting (read "really screwed up") views on how it passes laws about various topics. I personally like the smoking ban, but not because I was worried about my health. I just always found it annoying to go anywhere in public and come back smelling horribly 'till I took a shower. I think it has to do with all the chemicals the semiconductor fabs leaked into the water in the bay area back in the early days of silicon valley.....

It's amazing how much more active (or possibly only on the outside and it's all a farce) young people are out here. I went to see Jason Mraz on Sunday at Berkeley and I'd say 20+% of the people there had a shirt/button/sticker/something with a political agenda on. I never remember people being that involved back when I grew up, but I was in a relatively small town.

[valkry]

ATTENTION: Solve all your problems...roll Australia!

[Drizzit]

let the gays get married, why should they be the only ones happy.

So true.... so very true... As the great Jerry the King Lawler said in a video game "A man doesn't know true happiness until he gets married. Then it is too late".

I sense much anger in you. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to -suufffeerring-.
Suffering leads to teh DARK SIDE.

Wiser words from yoda.

Better yoda