student loans | Multiple Enthusiasms

I wish I could talk about the economy with more knowledge, but I admit up front I cannot. I’m actually looking forward to the next week or two, when my business class transitions from marketing to economics; I’m not sure it’s the sort of economics the country is having trouble with (I sense not so much), but even still I figure there will be connections I can make between the two.

I once read a magazine article about the stock market. I can’t remember which magazine published it, but Rolling Stone is my first guess. The article was about a coming market related to either bulls or bears, whichever is worse, and it parsed the market itself as a sort of nebulous popularity contest. It vaguely connected being a popular stock like Apple or Google or Microsoft (though this was in the days before Google, I believe) to being the popular kid in school, and made the analogy that such popularity was a sort of currency, which was why people traded and bartered it. Why people believed that something so ethereal as a small stake in a zero and a one could be worth actual cash money.

I remember enjoying the article immensely even if I didn’t really understand it. Like I’ve never understood economics, and like I certainly don’t understand what’s going on right now. I guess maybe I really am Joe Sixpack even though my drink of choice is a Smirnoff mixer or a nice glass of wine. But when I open up Yahoo! and its finance page tells me every damned time that the Dow has dropped another twenty points since the last time it piddled itself, and I know that’s bad. I know, vaguely, what it means that it dropped in points, but in real world terms?

Found this terrific video at The Daily Show‘s website (and discovered how to embed video, I think, so I’m thrilled. I love The Daily Show):

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1574908&w=425&h=350&fv=videoId%3D185172]

Both McCain and Palin are proponents of drilling, and not just offshore. The desire/idea to drill seems related to being a Republican; I distinctly remember not long ago when Bush was making the case that we needed to open Alaskan reserves to drilling to, you know, relieve our dependence, or whatever. (which strikes me as further odd, because isn’t the GOP mindset toward less government intervention? I guess it’s just no intervention for those who need it, just for more old white dudes)

Which strikes me as a logically unsound argument. I’ve been teaching my students logical fallacies this past week, and the idea strikes me as one though I’m not sure what sort I’d classify it as. To make an analogy, it seems to me the equivalent of attempting to solve someone’s dependence on heroin by increasing their access to heroin.

It also strikes me as the sort of thing the party who thought ‘economic stimulus checks’ were a good idea would agree is another good idea.

Because, seriously, did that $600 really help all that much? I know I’m still just a broke-ass grad student, but then it ain’t like being a grad student has any relation to being broke at the moment; Lehman Brothers and AIG are both now broke-ass, too.

Which makes me wonder: where’s my $85 billion to bail me out? If the government is going to nationalize the big insurance company and relieve the debts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, why can’t they nationalize healthcare and relieve student loans? I think, for every dollar the federal government uses to either forgive or bolster giant conglomerate companies, they should also pledge one either to a national healthcare policy or to relieving broke-ass grad students of their student loans. Or maybe just lower the interest rate of Federal Stafford loans by, say, 1% or something.

It strikes me that this mad scrambling is the equivalent of cutting off our nose to save our face, rather than spite it. Those stimulus checks were pretty much entirely worthless, just like offshore/reserve drilling is inherently worthless. Just like those stimulus checks have done absolutely nothing to bolster the economy and prevent financial crisis, neither will increased drilling help resolve the energy crisis.

Multiple Enthusiasms

Infinite jest. Excellent fancy. Flashes of merriment.

Tag: student loans