Comments on: Wishing for a Snow Day

By: Dangrocksprofilemusic

Dangrocksprofilemusic — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:43:31 +0000

Jeebus, where did you get such erudite commenters. I, too, now slightly understand credit swap derivates as a result of today’s This American Life.

Anyway, I totally understand that wishing for a snow day, which later in life is necessarily replaced by much darker and elaborate disaster fantasies that would allow one to stay home from work. But I think you’ve hit on some deeper vein here about how in most disasters, we’re “all in it together.” Or maybe we’re both just nihilists.

By: BP

BP — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:34:40 +0000

There’s more pork in that bill than there is at the local Fire Prevention Week Pancake and Sausage breakfast! I read about all sorts of earmarks and pork in that bill. I just hope the CEO’s don’t see one dime of my tax money! I did read some of the ideas from others that read the Jake Mohan blog and I would throw one in: fix the infrastructure. It’s a good use of taxpayer cash and it would help employment. It’s October 3rd and the main road I use to get to work IL 60 is still laden with potholes from last winter.

By: Julie

Julie — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:07:39 +0000

I’m de-lurking to expand on what Ransom said because I am a nerd in D.C. with a economics degree that I never get to apply and I used to examine banks and their investments. Also, note that I love the run-on sentence. Many institutions thought they were safely investing in the poo diamonds because they had the backing and safety of the federal gov’t (Fannie and Freddie), which were historically considered to be a very safe and conservative investment for banks. However, Fannie and Freddie were not doing what they were originally meant to do, which was package diamonds, not poo. Some say this is due to some laws that were passed earlier in the decade which required them to buy more poo so that more people could afford housing. Others say that Fannie and Freddie just got greedy and there is probably some poo diamond related fraud going on as there was zero oversight of Freddie and Fannie and they got too big. Its probably all of the above. I’m not a fan of the bailout in its current form and the politicos are having a field day throwing in unrelated and unnecessary earmarks. After living in D.C. for 3 years, I don’t trust any of our elected officials to do what is right, whatever that may be. Its all about self-interest and re-elections around here and I’m almost to the point of sticking my fingers in my ears and singing lalalalalalalalalalala until this all goes away.

By: Zach

Zach — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:57:46 +0000

Thank you for this. I’ve been immaturely asking for a reason for the world to just drop everything and focus on improving everything. We need a post-WWII type attitude but with everyone’s diverse interests noone is going to be willing to sacrifice until they have to. You’ve put it in to words that are hard to argue with.

I think I’ll focus on memorizing Simpsons episodes during my “improvement” time.

By: Court

Court — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:49:37 +0000

Oh, and I totally stole that growth industries line from Bill Clinton via the Daily Show.