Two for the Price of One!

Updated to reflect the fact that the bailout plan passed. Woohoo!

1: A Note on the Financial Crisis
I've been paying some attention to the financial crisis in the U.S., and have tried to understand it somewhat. Here's a quick summary of my understanding:

The crisis started when the housing bubble started to deflate. The bubble was fed by subprime mortgages, which were offered to less-creditworthy people on the expectation that they could pay so long as housing prices kept increasing. When they stopped increasing, rates went up, and people were unable to pay, so they foreclosed. These debts have cut off all the lender's capital (i.e. operational money), so although the vast majority of loans are good, they don't have money to get from day to day, and financial institutions are collapsing. According to the (liberal) economists I've read, the best strategy for the government would be to nationalize financial groups, restructure and recapitalize them, and then privatise them once they're stable.

Unfortunately, nationalism is seen as an expletive by half the population of the U.S., so the government's ability to handle the crisis is reduced. Up until now, all they can do is save individual institutions: for instance, they brokered a deal where JP Morgan Chase bought WaMu after its collapse by taking on some of the risk of the purchase. However, the bailout plan that just passed allows the government to play a more active role, but less active than outright nationalism. Basically, the Treasury can buy the bad debt off of struggling institutions, freeing up capital flows and allowing the system to continue. The legislation doesn't fix the problems that led to the crisis in the first place, but it will keep the system stable until the next admnistration can fix some of the underlying problems.

II: A Superficial (and Crude) Examination of Gender Relations

Isabel often tells me that girls are all bitches, and I think that a lot of guys are assholes. Now, I don't believe girls are bitches, and I think Isabel is likely to be a lot less judgemental about most guys. This raises the interesting question of why we view our own gender negatively, and the other gender positively. Obviously, I'm going to be speaking in generalities, as not all girls are bitches or guys assholes, and in fact there are male bitches and female assholes.

Looking back, most of the friends I've had have been girls. When it comes to my closest friends, it's about even, but probably favoring guys. Now, I'm not a macho guy: I dislike violence and completely reject the "Fight Club" mentality, and I appreciate 'feminine' qualities like cooperation and sensitivity more than domination and guardedness. However, when it comes to good people who don't have stupid ideas and principles, I tend to relate more to guys due to our common understanding.

If you take an arbitrary person, I'm much more likely to like them if they[1] are a guy or a girl. For one thing, I'm heterosexual, and therefore attracted to girls, but I'm also a lot more tolerant of girls than guys. Part of it is the rejection of machismo I mentioned earlier, but the other part is that I tend to be more tolerant of what I don't understand as well. If I don't know why a girl is acting bitchy, then I won't assume the worst, but if I know why a guy is acting like an asshole, then I'll think he's an asshole.

One consequence of this is that I'm much more judgemental of left-brained people than right-brained people. Obviously, factors like "is this person an asshole" come up before "is this person more logical and linear, i.e. left-brained?", but assuming they're nice, I tend to like right-brained people more. For one thing, none of my friends claim to be rational, although some of them are better at math and logic. I tend to see the flaws in someone like my roommate in first year pretty quickly, Himanshu, who had very different principles and claimed to be hyper-rational, but basically ignored his irrationality. We got along alright, and it was interesting to meet someone with such different principles, but I couldn't really be friends with him.[2]

I should probably say that I consider myself more rational than many people. That's not to say that I'm a rational person: I have principles and traits that aren't based on reason at all. But I tend to question and justify my principles, examine how they frame my worldview, and generally analyze myself more than most people do. At a later point, I'll actually reveal the model I've developed of me.

To get back to the matter at hand and wrap things up: I reject machismo, find girls attractive, and forgive their flaws more readily, so I prefer girls to guys. I'm assuming that Isabel sees things the other way round: she understands girls, dislikes their "bitchy" attributes, but is attracted to guys and isn't as bothered by their flaws. She thinks guys are dumb though, and I don't think girls are, so I guess girls come off better in my view than guys do in hers. She should probably speak for herself, though- this is just what I'm speculating.

[1] - there is nothing wrong with using 'they' as the pronoun for an arbitrary single person. The idea that 'they' has to be a plural pronoun was decided by some jerk a couple of centuries ago, and has since made English even more confusing. So please, use 'they' for the singular.
[2] - I doubt Himanshu will read this, but just in case: I hope you don't view this as unfairly critical. It's basically what I think, but rather simplified.