Obama Announces $2B Fund for Startups

It's not luck, just state by state differences. Some states are much better than others.

good point. and I don't disagree with you, but I'd take your argument to the next level about education and say we can educate a heck of a lot more people, more cheaply, and do it on more useful topics, which build more useful, core, long-term, non-profession-specific skills, if we wanted to.

It doesn't necessarily require throwing more money, in aggregate, at the education space. May mean spending less, but smarter. Lots of free ways to learn between the Internet, public libraries, family, neighbors, the physical opportunities of the world around us, and life itself. Helping more people to have better focus and willpower, and better emotional balance, and health, would go a long way to improving a lot of other things with the economy, even if indirectly.

For example, given a choice between having 1 more fellow citizen become a scientist or engineer, or instead having 10 more fellow citizens not steal, hurt people, be lazy, lack the ability to think logically, be swayed by propaganda when voting, lack ability to manage their own money, lack ability to plan for their future and understand consequences of their choices, and understand the impacts of their choices on their children, family, neighbors, future generations, etc -- I'll take the second option, please.

More "higher" education? Good. Much better "lower" education? Ten times as good, I bet.

"What would define a 'bailout' as then?"

It's to "help" someone in a "predicament". The context is that the someone is in trouble and to need the help is pejorative.

But with this definition, TARP was not a 'bailout'.

Help? The "help" is usually much like a gift and not likely to be paid back. The banks had to pay HIGH interest, and did. The US Treasury made out like vulture capital. In the end it was the banks, and their stockholders, who gave 'help' to the US Treasury and the US taxpayers.

Need? At least Goldman Sachs didn't need the money in any sense.

In most respects, the banks didn't really need the money; that's why they were able to pay back the money quickly with interest.

Any need there was was due just to the liquidity issue.

The main reason Paulson acted was to stop international runs on banks and, thus, save the world from something that stood to be worse than the financial collapse that caused the Great Depression.

Pejorative? Whatever the banks did wrong in blowing the housing bubble, the TARP effort was short term and not really the fault of the banks but caused by the Bear Stearns and Lehman problems and, thus, the FEAR (the seed of a bank run -- remember FDR) in the world that might have led to a run.

Recall also the 1987 stock market crash: Greenspan was at a big meeting, left, went to a phone, got the news, called the major NYC banks and told them "The window at the Fed is open". Greenspan was going to provide liquidity and avoid a liquidity problem that could have done serious damage.

My little example on the meaning of a liquidity problem was pitched at the grade school level. You SHOULD be able to understand it. Your reactions are way, WAY off base. If you don't like the ratio of $600 and $10 million, then assume $1 million and $10 million.

Or improve the example to be a college student who just inherited an office building worth $10 million but needs $600 for a DUI case. He's not broke, but he does have a liquidity problem. He can get the $600 but not in just a few minutes to get out of jail.

In finance, 'liquidity' is a crucial topic; you should quit straining to misunderstand it.

If you want a real example, then when my wife died, I faced $6000 in funeral expenses. I didn't have the $6000 in my checking account. But within the next month, I sold some stock, raised the $6000, and paid the bill. So I had a 'liquidity' problem. I could have borrowed money using the stock as collateral. Such a loan would not have been a 'bailout', or 'help' and nothing pejorative.

Let the startup fund be paid for by a tax on patent trolls.

I'm in full agreement about the media commonly distorting... everything in some way, but to say that we wouldn't be in Iraq or Afganistan if it weren't for them? I don't think it was Fox News who broke the story about 'Uranium shipments from Niger', it was the White House. Clearly the media had NO part in constructing CIA intelligence that led us to Iraq, they just repeated what we were told.

Same thing with your China implication, that they wouldn't be where they were without the US media distorting information... that just doesn't make sense to me. Please explain if you can