ow much money is “a lot of money”? $10 million? $10 billion? What about $10 trillion? Unless we steer away from current spending habits, that’s exactly what our national debt will be by 2011, if not earlier. Using cheerful music and fun graphs, IOUSA is a documentary attempting to bring the national debt into public consciousness, à la An Inconvenient Truth. Although the debt is not as obviously catastrophic as global warming (if debt sinks New York, it’s different from New York literally going underwater), it still remains one of America’s most pressing issues.

Money is sexy. Talking about treasury bonds, debt figures, and budgets, however, is not. The heroes of the film, Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition and David Walker, former comptroller-general of the United States, address this problem as they travel around U.S. on the “Fiscal Wake-up Tour.” In many ways, it’s almost sad how futile their effort is—the documentary shows several instances where local news personalities agree on how important the issue is, and how much attention it would garner—but come press time, grave national matters like the weather and ring-swallowing diamond thieves hog the headlines.

The scope of our national debt problem is at the same time incredibly difficult… and incredibly easy to grasp. The difficult part is wrapping one’s head around the idea that the government not only borrows money, but will also have serious problems if it does so to a ridiculous extent. Many of the “regular people” interviewed in the documentary weren’t even quite aware how the government borrowed money, and had only the vaguest notion that a supposed “national debt” exists.

When one stops thinking of this issue in terms of the government, however, it’s an obvious problem—if you keep borrowing money, eventually you have to pay it back. And if you get too far in debt, it’s either going to take a lot of work from you or repo agencies to get out of it. In the film, Warren Buffet likens the fiscal situation to a fairy tale, with “Squanderville” and “Thriftville”—the former being a country that is rich and constantly borrows more money than it earns, the latter being the exact opposite. It’s not terribly difficult to figure out that he is referring to the United States versus China, and other such high-savings nations—and that it’s a warning to us.

The moral of that particular story, however, is that if one continues to live beyond one’s means, incurring massive deficits and running up a huge trade deficit to boot, you will eventually find that you’re out of possessions, and “Thriftville” owns everything down to the shirt on your back. Pundits on both sides of the political spectrum will continue to either decry the evil conspiracy of foreign nations such as China and Saudi Arabia, or push for protectionism as a “solution” to the problem. Albeit indirectly, IOUSA points out that all of these headaches are really our own fault. Our assets aren’t being bought up because of a conspiracy—it’s because we’re basically selling them (more accurately, mortgaging them). We don’t have a trade deficit because of currency manipulation or any deliberate malice—the main reason is because we buy too much. We’re like children in a toy store: we can’t seem to stop wanting and buying.

The biggest spending today is not the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. Even if we somehow cut off all funding for it right this instant (which is practically impossible anyway), that would still mostly be a drop in the bucket. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are ultimately the big-ticket items on the horizon that will bring our country to its knees. President Johnson, during the Vietnam War, had to choose between guns and butter. Today, it’s not a decision between guns or butter—comparatively, we don’t actually spend that much on guns. We just have far too much butter.

America complacently grew used to spending and living far beyond its means. It created a Golden Age that was mostly built on debt and IOUs to both the American people and the rest of the world. IOUSA warns us that we need to do something about the national debt, and do it now. Unfortunately, that’ll be a hurdle both politically and practically. We would all like the world to unite under common bonds but the sad fact is, one of the only commonalities today is that most every country and their citizens are owed money by the United States. It’s been fun, but it’s about time the party ended.

hen even the most rabid free-market economists are in favor of government intervention, you know things are bad. No, I’m not referring to bank nationalization (though there does seem to be an awful lot of chatter leaning in that direction). I’m talking about Obama’s plan to reform the federal student loan program by cutting out private lenders.

The concept behind permitting private lenders into education was that the government could pay small amounts to subsidize those loans, instead of lending the whole amount itself, making student loans more attractive. Banks were expected to then leap in and flood the market with loans, amplifying the government’s reach. In practice, however, this system has served as a big favor to banks and the financial services industry (representative beneficiaries: Bank of America and Citigroup); the vast majority of loans made by “private lenders” involved little more than their doling out government money. The “amplification” concept rarely came to fruition, and when good times turned to bad, the “amplified” loans were the first to disappear. As a result, the government’s direct-loan program has ended up forking out most of the money while private lenders use government dollars to fill their pockets.

“Services” Rendered

If private lenders and their services had added (any) substantial benefit to the student loan process, one could argue that they deserved a cut of the money. As it stands, however, not only do the loans propagated by such companies have default rates of over seven percent (government ones, by comparison, clock in around 5.8 percent), they also fail to provide the enhanced “service and amenities” claimed by their extensive marketing. The “services” that the majority of lenders provide are along the lines of call centers in India and the distribution of fancy brochures. The rest of the money went to bribes—I mean, “gifts”—for student loan officers to fill out the companies’ own bottom lines.

It may sound as though I’m painting with too broad a brush, or being sensationalist. If only. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo first uncovered this cozy relationship between loan officers and lenders, and since then it’s been exposed all over the nation.

In an effort to persuade Obama of the program’s worth, Sallie Mae, the biggest private lender in the program, apparently brought 2,000 overseas jobs back to America. But does bringing 2,000, most likely minimum wage, call center jobs back to the U.S. justify the decision to keep funneling money into an exploitative cartel? Are 2,000 call center jobs worth an estimated $94 billion over ten years, not to mention the shameless exploitation of college students?

The answer is quite clear. That $94 billion distributed over ten years, largely wasted even before this economic crisis destroyed its fragile façade of purpose, would have been better off in a federal loan program than in the wallets of Sallie Mae and Co. Simply put, it’s wiser to provide students with more financial aid than to cynically purchase 2,000 minimum wage jobs at a call center in Utah.

A Hard Fight

Why, then, does Obama’s proposal face so much opposition? Think of it this way: if you stood to lose $9.4 billion a year of easy, virtually risk-free money, wouldn’t you be willing to spend big to keep it? And spending is exactly what the private lenders are doing. They are hiring big names like Tony Podesta (brother of one John Podesta, part of Obama’s transition team) and John Gorelick to lobby for their bottom lines. Aside from such influential connections, the private sector companies have little in the way of an argument. Even the most conservative papers have yet refrained from coming out in support of the private sector—the reason being that this entire program, a testament to the so called “free market,” was a travesty. In fact, it was hardly free market, as the government’s money and fingerprints are all over it. But this program’s failures also clearly are connected to the private sector’s involvement. These disingenuous folks have racked up a damning track record, and reaped gargantuan profits doing so.

Even with the other side standing to lose $94 billion and spending every penny to maintain the status quo, the Obama plan will most likely succeed. Lawmakers are aware that this situation is a serious indictment of private lenders (many of whom are already being handed money in the banking bailout). Additionally, Obama has the necessary star power to get his message across. And to top it off, the other side lacks a strong argument (to say the least) in support of continued privatization.

A Bellweather

Money does talk, however, and a lot of it is on the table. If this proposal loses, we’ll find that not much has changed in American politics; Capital Hill will continue to be there for the taking­—assuming, at least, that one has the capital, connections, and influence to master it. Yet the circumstances of this situation may yet lay our most jaded fears to rest. Yes, buckets of money are at stake, but with things as bad as they are there is hope that the government will take action on behalf of the common good.

We need to support future generations, who already have to deal with the results of the economic collapse, climate change, and countless other serious issues. With so much at stake, $94 billion for students to attend college is a sound investment. If nothing else, it’s a start.

ooking over the contents of this particular issue of the Dartmouth Free Press, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. With all the weighty issues facing us today, it’s simple to conclude that it’s hopeless for any of us to do anything. After all, these are huge problems facing all of human society—what can we, as individuals, do?

We progressives are often criticized for being too idealistic, for “caring too much” about things that just “can’t,” or “won’t,” change. These charges paint those who “care” as impractical, naive, and foolhardy and are leveled to cast doubt on ideas that may sound nice, but (as our friends who so proudly identify as “pragmatic” would say) are not relevant to the real world. I respectfully disagree. Let me be clear: I do not claim that every cause with a banner raised in its name demands urgent action. After all, there really are too many competing causes, too many pressing priorities, too much for us to truly give each its due. But this point is not synonymous with surrender, nor does it demand we sacrifice our idealism on the altar of pragmatic compromise.

Simply put: some big causes cannot be ignored and cannot be postponed, no matter the objections raised by so-called political realists. Environmental change and global warming, for all the political noise that now obscures their urgency, cannot be put off. We have to do something about them now if we are to do anything at all. The national debt, coming to a precipice, is ready to fall into an already cavernous hole created by Social Security and Medicare. Again, something must be done now. These big, world-changing issues do not wait, regardless of how committed we are to putting them off. We won’t magically get more time to act effectively just because we neglected to start dealing with the underlying causes early enough.

While there are many of these epic issues to deal with, many progressives focus on small, local, and personal problems. It is these small quests that many Dartmouth students find urgent and pressing. We need to be more queer-friendly. We need to create more gender neutral housing. And we need to better anticipate and respond to shameful outbreaks of bigotry: the Blarflex comic belittling a fellow student (and most minority demographics on campus); the GGMM’s failed joke about our incoming president, to name two recent examples. It wouldn’t seem that these are the issues an activist/progressive/concerned citizen should fill his or her plate with. They aren’t, well, important enough…right? Why pay attention to these when there are, frankly, so many more important causes out there? Progressivism too often falls into this perennial trap, one that prioritizes the global at the expense of the local, as does our media and our societal attention span as a whole.

Too often we turn our attention to the sexy, trendy causes of the month. The 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia captured the attention of the world and an outpouring of support and money. And then it stopped. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina brought the world together in a grand signing of checkbooks and a flurry of brief service trips to New Orleans. And then we lost interest. These issues have not lost their relevance, nor have they been “solved” by any means. The displacement and devastation caused by the tsunami remains evident. Today, thousands of refugees from New Orleans are still languishing, scattered across nearby states in motley patches of trailer parks. These issues held our national and international attention not because of their inherent significance or our underlying concern—they held our attention because they were the issues of the day.

Yet if we don’t pay attention to the things around us, where can change be immediately and significantly affected? Issues close to home are rarely as sexy and exciting, and they also (necessarily) lack the grand human drama involved in disasters and catastrophes. We become complacent, acclimated, and apathetic. College-hopeful juniors and seniors happily take service trips to Africa, Southeast Asia, and other exotic regions to relieve poverty, but never really stop to think closer to home. At home in California, I saw many students head off to Ghana, Malawi, and the like out of an admittedly admirable desire to address poverty. Yet these exotic crusades too often ignore the all-too-close urban decay in the cities and towns nearby.

Tip O’Neill once said that “all politics is local.” So is change. We always reach for the grand sweeping changes because they are most noticeable, and we imagine they will be the most broadly felt. But if we do not first attend to issues crippling us at a local level, are we really in any state to help others? Can we, as starry-eyed, self-consciously idealistic college students, eradicate poverty in Africa if we don’t have the formula to do so in America?

We have to pay attention. The end of apathy does not simply come when one is moved by the pleas of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Greenpeace, or any number of advocacy groups. Even the causes dear to me, on a personal level—those of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), or the Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM)—I realize are not as immediately pressing as others worth participation and energy. My two dollars could do little to help these causes. Yet those same two dollars, used instead to buy ice cream for a low income child I tutored in my area (while explaining the physics behind salt, water, and ice cream), made an immediate, and I hope, somewhat lasting impact in at least one life. We often forget all of the little things that we can do by virtue of action rather than abstract concern. This is not to say that the big issues are to be ignored. It’s simply to say that, on an individual level, the small ones can take us far further, and collectively have far more of an impact than our dedication to a thousand “big” causes.

Each of us has different talents, different abilities, and different capabilities for change. Whether it’s something big, like the ability to create national awareness about global warming, or small, like the ability to organize a fundraiser for renovations to a local school, or yet smaller, like the ability to spark a child’s interest in science where none existed before, we can all do something. Of course, the “big” issues will continue to be important. But in everyday life, we all too often forget about—and are therefore apathetic towards— the pressing, local issues we’ve become blind to. Activism, and progressivism, have for too long been defined in unsuitably narrow terms. Whether it be the Civil Rights Movement, which began with humble community organizing in Birmingham, Alabama, or the small, decentralized, and eminently local effort to fundraise and elect Obama, the roots of large change have always grown from small acts. In this day and age, overextended as we are and easily distracted by shiny, new causes, it’s important to remember this. Those who complain that individuals cannot effect change are looking to the wrong end. There is a great deal, however small it may be, that each person can do to make our world a better place to live in. Really, it begins at home.

hat is the Point of SA?

We admit: we weren’t expecting much from any of the Student Assembly candidates. When you’re going to class/FoCo/a random frat basement, how often do you think, “How did SA affect me today?” It seems that we only hear about it when something goes wrong—SA President Tim Andreadis ’07’s near-impeachment was the highlight of recent SA history. What we know about SA is that it exists, and that it is an ineffectual body.

In our past year’s election issue (8.10), we asked why we bother paying attention to SA. We wished they would focus on tangible issues—less on “paperclips/staplers/laundry detergent for everyone,” more on concrete reforms that would bring lasting change for the benefit of Dartmouth and its communities. Small amenities are nice, but (as we pointed out), we don’t need the high-achieving and obviously ambitious Dartmouth students who run for SA president to fetch us office supplies.

What we need is an effective advocate for the student body’s interests, a body that is able to pressure the administration. The same issues come up year after year, issues that seem to be reduced to endlessly debated buzzwords, like “gender-neutral housing,” “alternative social spaces,” “sustainability.” Candidates perennially come out in favor of such reforms, yet progress inevitably remains painfully slow, in some cases either hidden or nonexistent.

We do not need our Student Assembly president and vice president to be glorified suggestion boxes. We need them to be representatives, to present a tangible vision, to champion substantive issues. They need to lobby the administration, not act as its mouthpiece. Most students participate in other activities and don’t have time to devote our lives to understanding the bureaucratic labyrinth of Dartmouth. That’s what elected representatives—of any government—are supposed to do.

Unfortunately, SA’s past efforts have failed to live up to this standard. Largely disconnected from the very students it should represent, it seems more concerned with not making waves. Issues important to students rarely receive the attention and advocacy they deserve. And even if they are acted upon, SA’s efforts are often so poorly publicized that no one realized the issue graced its agenda.

A Common Theme

Previous SA candidates have often run on superficial platforms, promising little “treats” and the potential for easy, instant gratification. They also generally claim they will reform the inefficient irrelevance that is SA. Once again, this year’s candidates stressed their commitment to addressing significant campus issues, offering serious and realistic assessments of what can be done on campus. While this is, of course, different from actually fulfilling their promises upon election, all of the candidates were at least rhetorically on target. Maybe it’s the Obama euphoria, but we feel like we might believe them this time around. And maybe not.

Convergence

Despite vigorous attempts to assert their differences, all of the candidate’s platforms came across as strikingly alike. During our interviews, the candidates rarely made negative comments about each other, rather choosing to insinuate that their views were superior (without much proof). While their answers often seemed to display true passion and a desire for change, we were constantly aware that these candidates are all good politicians who need to be approached with a degree of skepticism. As they responded, we recognized a careful maneuvering, the subtle herding of the questions towards their strong points and their overall messages.

A Vice Presidential Endorsement

The Dartmouth Free Press endorses Cory Cunningham for SA vice president. We were impressed by Cunningham’s long experience with SA, along with his clear understanding of the bureaucracy. He voiced frustration with SA’s past failures, and conveyed a sincere desire to make his ideals for improvement reality. In our estimation, Cunningham’s consistent and unwavering message of transparency and communication pushed him ahead of his opponent, Phil Aubart. In addition, Cunningham recognized that the proper role of a vice president is as a facilitator, not a policy-setter or leader, while Aubart seemed to mistakenly conceive of his position as a sort of president-lite.

A Presidential Endorsement

The Dartmouth Free Press endorses Frances Vernon for SA president.

As mentioned previously, each presidential candidate articulated similar views on the majority of important campus issues. To be perfectly honest, we suspect that they assimilated ideas from one other during the week of campaigning. But as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. We feel Frances will be most successful in presenting a reformist vision, and more importantly, in making this vision a reality. Her experiences with LINK UP, Class Council, and other student organizations were impressive—though one very active SA member commented, “It isn’t the same as SA.” Nonetheless, she clearly knows her way around the system better than the other candidates, an important attribute given the short tenure of each SA president. While being an outsider has its benefits, especially when dealing with an organization as desperately in need of reform as SA, we consider the knowledge and skills that might actually allow her to implement her goals to be more important.

As to the other candidates: John Nolan is above all an idealist. Out of all of the candidates we interviewed, he had perhaps the most original ideas and the strongest passion. He boasts outsider status and diverse list of campus experiences, including being a work study student, and seems to have the strongest incentive to work against the status quo. However, of all the candidates, he has the least concrete understanding of how to go about implementing these policies. When pressed on various issues, he offered passionate speeches about long work-study hours, sexual assault on campus, and other pressing problems—strong on sound, short on substance. Nolan’s responses came across as rather scripted, and his politicking in the debates, where he chose to go for inflammatory statements that he later admitted did not represent his true views, raises questions about his candidacy.

Finally, Boyd Lever bills himself as a realist and a revolutionary. We have to admit that when he first came in to talk with us, we initially put him in the exact box that he emphasized that he was not in—the “frat boy” candidate, the bully. We were surprised by his strong working knowledge of campus bureaucracy and knowledge of judicial affairs, especially as related to sexual assault. However, we realized during the interview that despite his claimed realist streak, he is guilty of overreaching, and showed some misunderstanding of the nature of student governments. For example, Boyd paints a picture of robust student government bodies at other colleges to embellish his illustration of SA’s institutional failings. However, James, the DFP’s editor, has some personal perspective on this issue as a transfer student. Dartmouth is not exceptional in having an impotent student government, so Lever’s attempts to make our “most inefficient” student assembly catch up to its peers might leave us, well, exactly where we are. We don’t believe that the vision he sets out is feasible. Boyd means well, but is in over his head.

We believe that Frances Vernon is, quite simply, the candidate best poised to take advantage of this moment, and to finally place SA on the path to being what it should be: an effective advocate for the Dartmouth community. She is more of a realist than her visionary self-depiction suggests, her lofty message tempered by citations of the strategies and management tactics of Fortune 500 CEOs. Her empha
sis on “vision” seems a diplomatic codeword for delegation, where the current administration was arguably weakest; stripping away the rhetorical fluff of her platform reveals a fairly detailed plan (at this stage) of what she expects to do—and how she intends to do it. If she lives up to a fraction of her campaign platform, we’ll be in a better state than we have been in many previous student administrations. While the same could be said for most of the previous administrations’ campaign promises, it seems we’re still not completely jaded yet.

Don’t disappoint us, Frances.

bama is president. Congress is overwhelmingly Democratic. Iowa, of all places, now permits same sex marriage. But although the parties are all over now—though they lasted a while—we’re still facing the grim reality of two simultaneous wars overseas (“conflicts,” if you prefer), an economic crisis for the history books, and a world quickly becoming more and more dangerous as would-be world powers start to stretch their wings.

With the economy crumbling beneath our rotten financial foundation, it’s the rare American who has forgotten that our world is not all sunshine and butterflies. But what many of us have forgotten is that while we face some of the most dire economic and international challenges in decades, our domestic social problems persist, too. The election of a black president has not done away with discrimination and social inequality—even if many behave as though it has. Having a Democratic majority in Congress does not ensure that a progressive social agenda is any more a part of our national consciousness than before, nor does it suggest that we now live in a utopia. Though same sex marriage is gaining traction in mainstream society, we’d fool ourselves were we not to anticipate a backlash. Vermont may have overridden a governor’s veto of its new marriage law, but can we be assured that Iowa’s Supreme Court will not have its decision overturned by legislation? Exhibit A: California and Prop 8.

Certainly, we have earned the right to celebrate our achievements. But we cannot stand idle when there are so many things still to be done. Whatever has been achieved, it does not excuse us from what obligations and social responsibilities we had, and still have, at home.

In this issue, we’ll be looking at some of these forgotten loose ends. First up is our cover article about gay marriage, a headline grabber that (admittedly) isn’t suffering any lack of attention. While we are as enthusiastic as any to share the Good News, Robbie Meyers’ analysis is tempered by the reality that we face a long fight before the queer community receives the equality it has so long fought for, and so dearly deserves.

From there, we delve into issues that were once prominently featured by the mainstream media and then quickly forgotten, issues that continue to affect us today. In the midst of our painful economic woes, national attention has turned away from two of America’s former media darlings: the Israel-Palestine Conflict, and now even further removed from national consciousness, the genocide in Darfur. Here, Amanda McNally discusses the founding of a new Students for Palestine organization on campus, while David Friedman offers a caustic assessment of the ICC’s actions against the president of Sudan.

On another front, Reuben Hurst, our Global Health columnist, reminds us that global epidemics still exist—and that America has, at times, been part of the problem rather than the solution. Chris Desir, meanwhile, covers protests against our freshly exposed, corrupt financial institutions, making sure we don’t forget that our current woes didn’t just “magically” appear, and that the hubris of the wealthy and powerful persists in all of its former glory.

Of course, not everything in the world is headed so fast and furiously south. Marissa Knodel, our environmental columnist, reminds us that, when it comes to the environment, President Obama is no President Bush. Bringing our eyes closer to home, we also give you a break from the storm with a review of the Blue Note concert, a look into our local (yes, local) Buddhist monastery, and an in-depth perspective on Panarchy, its history, and its supernatural residents. And we even compiled, for your enjoyment, the rants of Republicans at our rightmost fringe…the crazies—sure, this is all usually sad and depressing, but who can’t help but smile when the Republicans are working so hard to marginalize their party? Please, reward them with a laugh.

Our problems are far from over, whether here in Hanover or in the world at large. Try to take it all in, and it’s all too easy to become overwhelmed and depressed, especially when you realize that these festering societal problems didn’t suddenly go “on hold” while we deal with our (shrinking) checkbooks and bank accounts.

In the absence of Bono concerts, we tend to forget about AIDS in Africa. Only when there “isn’t anything better on” do we remember the Middle East, Sudan-Darfur, Afghanistan—all of these wars and chronicles of human suffering. Have they become conversation points, almost perverse entertainment in our uneventful and comfortable lives? For example, when we occasionally remember the havoc we have wrought on the environment we recycle, we debate ANWR, we pat ourselves on the back for frequenting Whole Foods and Trader Joes… but only when we do remember. The world and its problems become, for us, almost like sideshows that bring “spice” to our otherwise cushy lives.

Yet when things aren’t so good for us, we suddenly focus on ourselves again. Politicians and T.V. anchors assume newfound interest in corporate governance. Newspapers actually try to cover the inner workings of Wall Street. Complacent congressional hopefuls, incumbents, and pundits all at once “knew it was coming.” The sideshow disappears, hard reality having greeted us so rudely at the front door of our comfortable existence. It’s as if the rest of the world and all of our other problems simply vanish. They only matter when we have nothing better to do.

Despite all of this, there is still hope. Our intractable problems have never left us, but other problems have. While we have these persistent injustices and inequalities, America has shown remarkable resilience against simply “settling”—exhibiting a special aversion to simply allowing ourselves to become a caricature of our former principles. We came close with the now infamous Bush administration, but pulled back from the brink with Obama’s election. Once a land of white male privilege, of slave-owners, we have come so far. The sins of our society are numerous, glaring, and still make any responsible citizen blush, given that discrimination, hate, inequality, and so many other hideous $mdash;isms still exert their perverse influence. But one need only look to our progress—unparalleled and unprecedented in the history of humankind—to seize hope and take a breath, to press on, to keep fighting. Let’s not overstate American exceptionalism, but let us also not forget that many “impossible to solve,” seemingly intractable problems have had more progress made on them in our short 300 years than in the thousands preceding them. Our journey isn’t over, and we have a long way to go, but let us also remember our history and the noble precedent that precedes us. Naïve though it may sound in these times, we’re taking steps—really—into a better world.

n what seems to be an eerie foreshadowing of our current economic crisis, When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein, published in 2001, details the late’90s rise and fall of the massive hedge fund Long Term Capital Management, more commonly known as LTCM or Long Term. With not only star-studded luminaries of the financial world, but also Nobel-prize winning academics on its staff, it was the ultimate financial brain trust—an extreme version of the “rock stars” from the Ivy League and top universities that dominated American investment banks. Their brashly confident use of mathematical models stunned the financial world at the time, making unmatchable profits with virtually no losses.

However, this particular story has an all too familiar ending. Although the fund managers made returns of over 400 percent for their clients before disaster struck, LTCM sunk, nearly taking the entire economy with it. At the time, the fund had a ridiculous leverage ratio (borrowed money/their money) of 25 to 1. This meant, without getting into complexities, that every gain was multiplied 25 fold—along with every loss. Their balance sheet was an earthshaking $1.25 trillion. Even in our current financial crisis, with massive numbers bandied around as if they’re nothing, this was still a monstrous balance to be held by a single firm. It was easily enough to wipe out our world financial system and the economy with it. But to put the fund in perspective with our own crisis, many investment banks, before the bust, had leverage ratios of 30 to 1.

LTCM was the forgotten crisis. Although it captured media attention once the story broke and American taxpayers found out we were bailing out the multi-billionaires of the fund, the combined actions of the Federal Reserve and largest investment banks helped avert a crisis. Unfortunately, this time, the ones in need of rescue are the investment banks themselves.

When Genius Failed should have been a story that we all read—that we all remembered. The financial instruments that destroyed LTCM in’98 were the exact same ones “rediscovered” by the investment banks in the 2005-2007. Although the securities were backed not by real estate but by the stock and currency spreads, it was all the same sad tale (and in fact, was an identical tale for AIG, who held the same type of securities). The institutions extracted all the money they could out of their fancy new models and instruments. In desperation, and greed, they overreached and started taking on more and more risk to extract every ounce of cash they could from their now irrelevant models.

It was ultimately hubris that destroyed LTCM and the banks. It was the irrational, idiotic assumption that even as they reached further and further into the financial abyss, everything would be just like those happy times they made easy money. It’s infuriating how identical these crises are, and how soon it was after LTCM collapsed that banks made the exact same mistake—except this time they did so all together. It was history we forgot, history we have all too tragically repeated. Alas, for us, this time the self-interested “saviors” that rescued the economy from the last crisis are the ones now in desperate need of salvation.

ll in all, I was quite pleased by the results of Proposition 8 in California. No, I am not a religious fundamentalist who believes (erroneously) that gay marriage is against the teachings of the Bible. No, I am not one of those people who believe that marriage is either a sacred/sentimental institution that should be preserved by tradition, or a biological union solely for the purpose of popping out children. And no, I’m not even someone who thinks that Prop 8 is bad because the entire marriage institution is morally bankrupt and unnecessary. I’m merely a realist.

Let’s look at the campaigns. The “Yes on Prop 8” campaign relentlessly dispatched outreach volunteers to all major demographic segments of California, including blacks and other minorities; volunteers who came armed with pamphlets and flyers printed in language upon language. Meanwhile, the “No” campaign basically threw the political equivalent of a tea party for white liberals. Harsh? Reportedly, when one of the top campaign organizers was asked whether or not to print distribution materials in other languages, like Korean and Chinese, he responded with a confused, “Why?” No, not harsh at all, I think. The only surprise here is that the “No” campaign was bewildered that they lost on Election Day.

Organizational disparities aside, Prop 8 represented a major loss of ground for the movement against gay marriage. To understand why, one merely need look at Prop 22, the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed in March of 2000 with 61.4% for, 38.6% against, banning same-sex marriage in California. This ballot initiative, which used the same 14 words as Prop 8, was invalidated not because of the will of the electorate, but because it was overturned by the California Supreme Court in 2008. Prop 8 might have been in some esoteric sense a “more significant” measure because it was an amendment to the state’s constitution instead of “just” a ballot initiative, but it was essentially the same public plebiscite on gay marriage. Despite this, and despite how well the campaign for Prop 8 was bankrolled, organized, and executed, Prop 8 actually lost ground from 2000—passing with a slim margin of 52.30% to 47.70%.

For those of you who would protest that this is still a major setback for same-sex couples and gay rights, I agree with you. However, with such incredible odds set against same-sex marriage in California, not the least of which being the formidable status quo, it is amazing that despite such a minimally effective campaign against Prop 8 (or perhaps completely ineffectual would be more accurate), it didn’t do as well as Prop 22. Besides, even if Prop 8 failed, there would have been nothing stopping it from coming back in the next electoral cycle.

“But it would have been a great victory… and demographics are on our side!” Of course, it would have been a nice and tidy symbolic victory to defeat Prop 8. But the demographics argument has been a comfortable fiction of activists for quite some time now. The reality is that the fastest growing demographic segment in California is Hispanics, which for various religious and social reasons are more likely to oppose same-sex marriage than the general population. Perhaps, the argument goes, “in the long run,” we, as a society, will look back on all of this in the same way we now look back on Jim Crow, slavery, and the like… but as John Maynard Keynes famously stated, “In the long run, we’re all dead.” Demographics is and will continue to be a hurdle against the turning of the tide, at least for this next generation—and there was pitifully little chance that the backlash from a failure of Prop 8 wouldn’t have propelled the next Prop 22 clone into the state constitution in the next ballot.

Instead, look at where we stand now. Fewer Californians voted for banning same-sex marriage. And coupled with the victories of very similar ballots across various other states, there is more awareness about the issue than ever. How much did we hear about same-sex marriage and gay rights before this debacle? Many people didn’t even know about Prop 8, or that same-sex marriage rights were in jeopardy in Califronia. We’ve been growing complacent.

Some of this activist feeling might be questionable. For instance, the net mobs unleashed by eightmaps.com, a site that uses Google maps to document the names, businesses, and location of donors to the “Yes on Prop 8” campaign—donors who are now subject to harassment, boycotts, white powder in envelopes (in all seriousness), and the like. Still, on the whole, the Prop 8 experience has revitalized and refocused the gay rights movement. We now have a better idea of where we stand, a more realistic, tempered idea of the work ahead.

New rights are not just given. Generations don’t just naturally become “more progressive,” however you want to define the term. If we want that “long run” result that’s talked up so much by hopeful, optimistic activists, we need to take it. Let California serve as a wake-up call for the rest of us—if this stereotypically “liberal” surfer state has banned gay marriage, perhaps it wasn’t so “inevitable” after all. We have to persevere, not in juvenile fashion of the abusers of eightmaps.com, but in a constant, steady assertion of what we believe is right. In the long run, we may all be dead. But if we want to make sure that the cause we support isn’t also dead, we need to do more than the minimal amount of energy focused against Prop 8 in California.