It’s a very rare occasion where I can get excited about anything to do with politics, or it has been for the last several years. But I am so glad to see that everyone came together and selected the right man for the job.

It’s also amazing the amount of young voters and new voters that came out to vote, seemingly sensing the importance of this election, and supporting the candidate that can lead us through the hard times that we all face now. The economy is down the toilet, jobs are being lost faster than their being created, everything is way more expensive then it used to be. We demanded change and we got it.

The funny thing is that I don’t think he’s the most qualified individual for the job, I’d have to give that to McCain. But Obama has the common sense quality that doesn’t come up often in politicians. He also has the ability to bring people together, and honestly will bring dignity back to the White House. From the first speech that I saw he seemed to identify with 90 percent of the issues that plague me today, and honestly who is more important than me? All the other issues are blips on my radar compared to the fact that I can barely afford health insurance, the economy nearly put my employment in jeopardy, and living paycheck to paycheck to put food on the table sucks.

So to President Elect Obama, I wish you luck and prosperity on the hard road that you have ahead. Don’t let us down.

There is a problem in America that is so large, so dangerous, and so imminent that it’s hard to really fathom for many people, and that problem is the current credit crisis that’s underway as I write this article. The average American does not know how drastic it can alter the way our economy operates, how much money is in your bank account, or if there will be banks to put your money into.

Talking with friends and family members and seeing the coverage on TV it seems like there is a large chasm dividing people on this topic. On the left there are those who know of the problem and of high finance and they are absolutely freaking out, and on the other is the average American who doesn’t know enough about the problem to properly freak out. The problem is that to properly explain what’s going on you need to teach a course in economics, and as much as that would be a great thing to do on prime time television one cannot interrupt America’s Got Talent or Heroes for mere triviality.

Now, I’m not one for reading into economics or government legislature but this particular story caught my eye because of it’s complexity, and it’s immediate impact on my life and the future of our country. I’m just your average Joe that has done some research and want to describe this in a way that will make you understand why this has happened and what it means for us.

Why this happened.

It’s being portrayed on the news that the problem arouse from the subprime mortgages going belly up. Now while it certainly does affect us economically when people can’t pay their mortgages and go default, but it was not the conduit to all the chaos. The culprit was the commercial paper market.

What is the commercial paper market?

Most people have never heard of the commercial paper market, and I didn’t until last week. The commercial paper market is a privately run market where gigantic corporations work directly with lenders and request huge sums of money with a set interest rate. Now you may ask yourself why a huge corporation needs to borrow money, don’t they have they’re own? Well to expand the company and to create revenue and cover large expenses that need to be covered to operate, a company has to have credit available at a moments notice. There are very few companies that do not participate in this practice. The lenders know of these companies and pretty much give them access to this at will, because even though there are no contracts they know that companies like McDonald’s and Google aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Now we’re talking a huge amount of money changing hands. And by huge I mean hundreds of billions of dollars a day. Yes, that’s a b. While these transactions are conducted on Wall Street but for the most part they are unaccounted for and are not reported because it’s essentially an huge IOU from a company to a lender. Now these lenders are banks, mutual fund managers, you name it.

So what went wrong?

Money market accounts are used as a safe haven for money. As you may know from having a 401k at your employment or talking with people about finance the money market accounts are known for they’re stability. Honestly they were glorified savings accounts. You don’t expect a huge return like you would investing in stocks or aggressive funds, but you knew your money was safe.

The reason why money markets were so safe is that they invested in the commercial paper market in companies that have been around for ages, some originating last century. And they knew that by investing this way they were guaranteed to be paid and share the small profit across the board.

The problem came when Lehman Brothers, one of the oldest and most prestigious investment firms could not cover losses on their mortgage assets. Now the lenders that were funding the commercial paper loans saw this as a bad sign cut down the amounts that were being given to Lehman Brothers and essentially compounded the problem and they were forced to go bankrupt.

Now enter our last player. The Reserve Fund.

The Reserve Fund was the first American money market fund created. It’s the gold standard when it comes to stability. Since money market’s invested heavily into commercial paper they were affected by the Lehman troubles and for the first time “Broke the Buck”, which means posted a loss on a money market fund. When wall street got wind of this everyone started pulling out of the paper market and all these great lines of credit froze. Companies could not get the money that they need to operate and start to break down, like what happened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack.

What’s the deal with the bailout.

The bailout gives 700 billion dollars (actually a little less with all the pork barrel) to Wall Street to give back some of the money lost and regain liquidity in the market. Now I haven’t read all 400+ pages of the bill, but there isn’t a guaranteed method to get the money back, and ultimately it’s taxpayer money that funded this.

If we do nothing then there would be a mass economic bankruptcy that would cripple the economy and end life as we know it. Foreign markets that rely on ours will fail and everything will be screwed. So the bailout is good, if it works. But the main problem that needs to be addressed is monitoring the commercial paper market so it’s public knowledge how much a company has out, who has it and make sure that this does not happen again.

I actually found this the other day by accident and thought it would help anyone looking for decent photo editing software.

Photoshop Express is a nice application that allows you to edit photo’s and do some relatively advanced adjustments to your photo’s online without a price tag.

It still looks pretty new as of now, but has some great sharing features that really make uploading a breeze. It allows you to upload to your photo’s to Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket and Picasa right through the sleek dashboard.

Now there are some advanced online photo editing programs out there, but ths is a nice basic editor that anyone can use without having knowedge of adjustment layers and the host of other features that sometimes clutter what seems to be an easy process. I’ll be sharing this one to friends and family.

After scouring the Internet for more hours than any human should, I’ve realized that I don’t like much of it. There is however, some really cool sites and communities to join and some very interesting concepts and information being shared. But I’ve put together a slice of what I absolutely hate about the Internet.

1. Top Ten Lists

Ironic, yes. But c’mon, this has gotten out of hand. There is more to publishing then just randomly putting together a crappy list of Photoshop Tutorials, or Open Source software recommendations. If lists have been done, and done well, they should not be attempted again. Let’s leave it at that.

2. Better Blogging Tips

There are way too many of these sites up now, all with their own ideas on how to increase you SEO and which ads to use and what topics to talk about. Now while I realize that blogs want to make money to maintain and grow, the most successful blogs out there should not be about making blogs successful, it should be the blogs with the best content.

3. LOLcats And Pictures With Captions.

God, do I even need to explain this one? If I see another picture of a cat with a horrible miss-spelled sentence under it, or a picture with the word FAIL on it, or a de-motivational poster rip-off then I will seriously give up on the human race and plan to seek out intelligent life.

4. Art Via Flash Applications

I’m no artist, but I can recognize something that’s pleasing to the eye. But for some reason there are these applications that pop out of nowhere that can randomly make art by clicking and moving your mouse on the canvas. This is a total waste of time and no one will ever use it more than once. I’ve never heard anyone say “Dude you have to try out this new kaleidoscope painting program!” And I hope that I never will.

5. Cartoons

There are too many people who think they are artist and aren’t. There are even more people that think they’re funny and aren’t. What do you get when you put these two types of people together? Crappy Internet cartoons. Yay! More stuff for me to read and at the end ask myself why I even Stumble anymore.

6. First Posters and Photoshop Caller-Outers

I hate it when someone actually takes the time to post to the fact that they are the first poster and don’t actually leave a comment. So no, you weren’t the first poster. The guy after you that actually posted a comment was. And you should really put together some sort of semblance of a life together at some point. This goes out to those Photoshop caller-outers. Oh yeah, do you think the picture of the two cats break-dancing is a Photoshop? Get the hell out of here, REALLY? You mean to tell me that cat’s cannot perform the robot, or pop-n-lock? Yeah…

Well, that’s it for the list. I’m sure I’ll add more as they pop up. It’s something that is definitely not in short supply.