Economic Woes or Misunderstood Opportunity?

We have all heard of the disaster that has befallen the world economy. Stocks are going down, houses are being repossessed and jobs are going down the drain. At least, that's the story in most parts of the world.

All of this came about because somebody got greedy. They decided to risk the money that we had put into the bank, funding loans to people with neither the intention, nor the ability, to repay it. Now the United States has had to pony up over 700 Billion, that's billion with a B folks, in tax payers' money to shore up the entire banking system. A number of other governments have had to do the same thing.

Now, if you are one of those people about to lose your home, I do feel for you. You have worked very hard to get what little you have. You make your payments and then have that investment yanked out from under you when the bank goes under. Which is to say, I feel for those of you who borrowed responsibly.

At the same time, I can't help but wish that I had some liquid capital sitting around for the next couple of months. When the market gets this low, I have the instinct to snap up some of what the panicking monkeys on Wall St. and Bay St. are dumping. At the end of this fall, there is going to be demand again, and those stocks will be worth a fortune. Whenever somebody lets the ball drop, there will always be somebody at the other end, waiting to take the advantage.

In point of fact, I still don't know how the banking industry ever should have affected the stock markets so deeply. Okay, housing markets have tanked, and banks and trust companies dumped what they had in an attempt to make up the losses from their stupidity. Where were the visionaries that could see this as an opportunity to buy into something they didn't have? A lot of what was sold is stock in good, solid companies with viable products and services.

Every time the economy takes a downturn like this, I'm tempted to sell a kidney and buy in. Learning from the mistakes makes the global economy that much stronger.

The Election Process

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."
Thomas Jefferson

With federal elections going on in both Canada and the United States, it seems appropriate to take a moment and think about the way we govern ourselves.

Firstly, that's an interesting concept right there. "Govern ourselves." Do those words really have any meaning anymore? It seems that we have given up that right, to rule our own paths, to others, we even pay them to do it. We delude ourselves into thinking that we have control by saying that we chose them to represent us.

Here in Canada, at least, this just isn't the case by and large. The parties decide who will run in each riding (or electoral district for those who don't speak Canadian) on their behalf. Only members of the party in question are welcome to submit their name for nomination. Every now and then, some maverick will put their name forward as an Independent candidate. On rare occasions, they actually get a seat in the House.

It would be nice if the people we elected were truly our representatives, voting the way the constituents tell them.

In the same train of thought, it is very interesting in how we choose (and I use that word loosely) the actual leaders of our respective countries.

Here in Canada, the leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Commons becomes the Prime Minister. He or she will remain in that post as long as his/her party is in power and feels that he/she should remain as leader of the party. The only limitation is that there must be an election a minimum of every five years. In other words, we the citizens do not actually have a say in who the person is who will represent us to the world.

In the United States, you choose who will represent you as President directly. However, if he or she happens to be of a different party or ideology than the majority of Congress, there is little can be done because of the struggle between the Legislative and Executive branches of the government.

And I still do not understand the whole "electoral college" thing either. From what I see, it's quite possible for the college to override the wishes of the people in choosing who the President is going to be. Forgive me if I am in error. As I stated, the whole concept eludes me.

Which brings us to the major difference in the election process between Canada and the United States. You will never hear about broken ballot computers or hanging chads in Canada. It's simple people. The candidates names are written on a slip of paper with a circle next to it. You put a mark in the circle next to the name of the person you are voting for. Questions about the numbers? Each party has one scrutineer watching as the ballots are recounted, twice. The candidate with the most valid ballots wins.

All the same, sometimes I am still tempted to put in a write in vote for Bullwinkle J. Moose.

Dilemmas

I'm on the horns of a dilemma, one partially of my own creation.

In the course of writing a story, I became part of a semi-collaboration. I have added other authors to my tale (with their permission), and made it possible for them to help the story evolve. This seemed like a very good idea at the time. After all, we all got into writing fan fiction for the fun of it.

The thing I forgot to take into account is group dynamics. For a man who minored in psychology, that was pretty stupid.

One of the writers has begun to encounter problems with others. I do not have the specifics of the problem, as it occurred in a chat room when I was not present. It has potentially damaged the integrity of the characters of my story, in that if they cannot work together in the real world, asking them to do so in this tale won't work either. The writer involved has left it to me, as the story's author, to decide what to do.

So, do I take him out of the story or leave him in? Do I get involved in any personal squabble these writers have, or stay away from it? Instinct tells me to stay out of the mess myself, and perhaps do some rewriting so that this person stays in, but does not have to necessarily deal with the others when the story planning is done.

It is my story, and so up to me. I just don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.

This is what happens when you start writing around real people instead of just the fictional ones.