Not an expert

I'm not going to pretend I understand even a fraction of what's going on with the economy, but ...

I'm not down with giving $700B to bail out banks and businesses that have proven, on a monumental level, that they're incapable of handling their own money. What makes anyone imagine that they're going to be responsible with taxpayer dollars? I don't think I'm down with any kind of bailout, come to think of it. If I eff up my personal account, I don't get a bailout. On the contrary -- I get overdraft fees; quite the opposite of help. But the lesson is learned: I don't overdraft my accounts.

And this bout of the market throwing a financial temper tantrum because Wall Street doesn't like that other people don't think a bailout is deserved is BS.

In other news: There's a gas shortage in North Carolina. Matt said the school district north of them (not the one Molly teaches in) is busing its employees to and from the schools, because everyone in the greater Charlotte area (perhaps in the Carolinas area -- that wasn't quite clear) has been advised to not buy gas for the next two weeks.

Molly's district, however, is not offering anything nearly so nice.

If teachers in Molly's district can't make it to school due to an unavailability of gas, the district will "let" them take an UNPAID personal day off from work. And not because they're out of sick or vacation time ... just because the superintendent apparently is an ass (inster witty Shakespeare-ism here). Matt had other sentiments, spelled out in capital letters, accompanied by sign language.

We chatted a bit about gas prices (it's really not that expensive where he is -- it just isn't available, either) and how people still fail to comprehend that the price you're paying at the pump today reflects the price of the oil bought several weeks ago; they think that if oil was lower on the market on Monday, then they should start seeing a break on Tuesday. I asked him about gas prices there, because he wrote the day after Hurricane Ike to say that gas was $5.30 a gallon. "Isn't that price-gouging?" I asked, and he confirmed -- to the point that the stations that had charged over $4.50 a gallon at that time had been fined, and the stations that had charged over $5 had been closed down ... and are still closed.

The lesson learned here? I'm thankful that I live in Wyoming, where gas is a) available and b) relatively affordable ("relative" is $3.41 a gallon, compared to $4.21 a gallon).