"Dems need to understand our candidates['] policies, and trust them to carry them out even if their public viewpoint is more 'moderate'."

Gee, that worked so well with Bill Clinton, didn't it?

"I feel your pain." Did you, Bill?

Two thoughts: Don't Ask, Don't Tell; the Defense of Marriage Act.

Not only did Billary NOT carry out the policies some thought they held so dear, they fucked the LGBT community over with barely a backwards glance.

No, MaddieP, we DON'T trust anyone to do ANYTHING on our behalf any more. This court decision actually affirms our humanity; bad timing or not, IT'S JUST ABOUT ALL WE HAVE THAT SAYS WE'RE HUMAN IN THE EYES OF THE LAW.

Why don't straight people get that?

Boy, you're not going to let up on this, are you?

We all see what side of this issue YOU'RE on.

Right now in the wonderful state of California, even given ambivalence on "marriage" as a universal right (and stare decisis is clear on this-- it IS), the solid majority of the citizenry is behind having some kind of legal union available to two adult California citizens. The amendment initiative removes the availability of ANY kind of union to people wishing to form one with someone of the same sex.

Once that is made clear to people, the initiative will most likely fail.

If it DOES pass, I still think Equal Protection is so fundamental to the Constitution that it would be summarily declared as contradictory to a central tenet of California law and therefore unconstitutional, illegal and in general fucked-up.

I assume there's a more binding legal term for "fucked-up"....

But since you, chiefpayne, just don't like us faggots and dykes, I guess I'm wasting my bandwidth.

I get it. Sorry.

I still think that the proponents of the amendment initiative are counting on religious righteous indignation keeping people in the dark as to what the amendment really means, and what it really wants to do.

And once the actual motivations come to the light, Californians will reject the initiative.

Then again, people are still spewing their hate publicly about "the Bible that this country was founded on is puking over this decision, Teh Gay is wrong, they're all Hell-bound cuz JEE-SUS says so...."

You can point out that Jesus says NOTHING about homosexuality or same-sex marriage ANYWHERE in the Gospels, but they won't hear it. This is self-delusion to the edge of insanity in my book.

In finance, we have to qualify all presentations of performance data with the statement: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

It's funny how people take that to mean: "Past market fuck-ups don't offer any lessons to anyone, so ignore them! Your investment values will only go UP, UP, UP!!!"

The history of investment is filled with the bloated corpses of market "innovations" that were poorly-understood and modeled badly, then snatched up by an ever-wider pool of investors all trying to grab that magical, limited increase in asset value (what we call "alpha"). These innocent fools rushed into these Latest and Greatest Investment Vehicles without understanding that ALL investments have risk of loss; they forgot that the word "derivative" actually means one has to understand the market forces driving the price of the asset from which one derives the vehicle's price (clever, ain't it?). They ALSO forgot that sometimes, when markets fall, they drag down EVERYTHING even tangentially related (the subprime crisis blew apart spreads for ALL non-agency structured debt related to real estate-- CDOs, CMOs, HELos, other ABS, even CMBS). Worst of all, they decided their investment style would follow a Vegas high-roller model, and levered their investments to an unsustainable amount; when the margin calls came in, they found themselves broke. Exhibit A: Carlyle Capital Management (RIP). Exhibit B: Bear Stearns (RIP).

Sometimes, folks, the professionals DON'T know what they're doing. If they're investing your money, make sure THEY know what's in your portfolio, what the individual investments are supposed to be doing, and what happens to the investments in Big Market Events, positive and negative.

The most important issue, I still maintain, is the fact that no one among the players in this tragicomedy had a real grasp of all the risks of the instruments they were flogging.

The rating agencies (Fitch, Standard & Poor, Moody's) are selling their services to the issuers of these instruments. The ratings themselves are a gauge of the perceived default risk of the instruments. Investors then use the rating as one piece of data informing the relative attractiveness of the instrument in question.

The issuer will sell more of their paper if the rating communicates a low risk of default. They have a choice in rating agencies; if one rater systematically has higher ratings, the issuer could favor that agency over a competitor. So the rating agencies take certain liberties, like assuming that a pool of subprime first mortgages will have a much lower default rate than a pool of seconds or HELos, to keep the issuers coming.

And NO ONE thought about the impact of the eventual default of large numbers of the subprime loans collateralizing these instruments, nor of the possibility of the meltdown spilling over into prime markets.

As usual, the problem isn't the innovation (although Charles Eames said it best: "Innovate as a last resort"), but the ignorance in the implementation of the innovation. Too bad so much collateral damage has resulted, huh?

You're slightly misreading my statement.

I didn't say that no one KNEW about the possibility of default. I'm saying that investors discounted and/or ignored it. They thought the rules of capital markets no longer applied.

Like they say-- if you start believing your own bullshit, you're done for.