Adventures in Real Life turned to general essay purposes.

[Freeky]

The other bit about Alty's rant kind of seems to fall out of nowhere in this version. The "Alty's face began to fall" part sort of leads it in, but maybe you can make it more .. ominous? I mean, there is a silence already (which can be described more portentiously or such), and then his face falls (off?? hihi like a mask) and then the background all sorts of fades away and gets dark, a spotlight turns on Alty and his voice has this, like, vicar quality to it, not quite booming, but it would have been as he spoke from the pulpit: "... [BOYS! ETC!]"

Also, This wouldn't happen in real life.  I know I said this was a made up story, but I had to pretend that it really happened, because it was supposed to be a thing about something that really happened. 

Separate from this, is how nonsequiter it is.  Well, yeah.  It's supposed to have been sticking in Alty's mind for a while, and finally he has to say something, and then it sort of gets out of control.

Thanks for your critique!  I realize now that I'm probably not supposed to debate it, but oh well. 

[Triple Zero]

It doesn't sound like you're debating anything

Also the bit you highlighted, yes that wouldn't happen in real life, but you can dramaticize it, like
---
We dug into our meals, and it was the first silence of the day. But this day being how it was, there could be no such thing. Alty swallowed something his mind had been chewing on. The built-up pressure released and it was like the background faded to a blur, a spotlight turned on Alty, even though nothing changed in the lighting of the diner. His plastic chair was the as everybody else's, but it might as well have been a pulpit. His voice wasn't booming, but given the other things that really shouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary, it might as well have been.
---
See? All perfectly true!

[Freeky]

It doesn't sound like you're debating anything

Also the bit you highlighted, yes that wouldn't happen in real life, but you can dramaticize it, like
---
We dug into our meals, and it was the first silence of the day. But this day being how it was, there could be no such thing. Alty swallowed something his mind had been chewing on. The built-up pressure released and it was like the background faded to a blur, a spotlight turned on Alty, even though nothing changed in the lighting of the diner. His plastic chair was the as everybody else's, but it might as well have been a pulpit. His voice wasn't booming, but given the other things that really shouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary, it might as well have been.
---
See? All perfectly true!

Why don't you write more story deals?  You should!

[Triple Zero]

I'll think about it ...  I was going to argue about how long it took me to write that, figuring it had to be 30 minutes or so, but looking back at my yesterday's Internet history it must have been about only 10 minutes. So I could write an amazing 6-paragraph column story in under an hour! Hmmm.

My last story was about space gorillas and an assaulted peanut pun. Are you sure?

[Triple Zero]

Also thanks for the compliment btw [and feel free to use those bits if they fit in your story of course] [the bits about Alty, not the peanut pun]

[Freeky]

My last story was about space gorillas and an assaulted peanut pun. Are you sure?

VERY YES.

[Freeky]

Also thanks for the compliment btw [and feel free to use those bits if they fit in your story of course] [the bits about Alty, not the peanut pun]

Final draft has already been turned in, unfortunately.

[Freeky]

WHO'S THE SEXY BEAST GOT DAMN NEAR PERFECT ON THIS FUCKER?  OH SNAP, ITS ME. 

BEGINNING GRABS READER'S ATTENTION: FUCKIN' 5/5
STORY HAS CLEAR PLOT DEVELOPMENT: FUCKIN' 5/5
USES SCENES: FUCKIN' 5/5
CONCRETE SHOWING: FUCKIN' 5/5 AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT IS.
CONCRETE SHOWING IN RELEVANT PARTS: FUCKIN' 5/5.  STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS.
CLEARLY ILLUSTRATES A VALUE/BELIEF: FUCKIN' 5/5
REFLECTION IS INSIGHTFUL AND WELL BALANCED: FUCKIN' 5/5
DIALOGUE SOUND NATURAL AND IS TECHNICALLY CORRECT: FUCKIN' 5/5
ENDING IS SATISFYING AND REINFORCES YOUR POINT: FUCKIN 5/5
FREE FROM GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION ERRORS: 4/5 CUZ I MISSED A DASH SOMEWHERE.


240/250.  SUCK MY HUGE THROBBING DICK, CLASSMATES WHO AREN'T SMART ENOUGH TO GET THIS SHIT.

FUCK YEAH.

[Doktor Howl]

WHO'S THE SEXY BEAST GOT DAMN NEAR PERFECT ON THIS FUCKER?  OH SNAP, ITS ME. 

BEGINNING GRABS READER'S ATTENTION: FUCKIN' 5/5
STORY HAS CLEAR PLOT DEVELOPMENT: FUCKIN' 5/5
USES SCENES: FUCKIN' 5/5
CONCRETE SHOWING: FUCKIN' 5/5 AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT IS.
CONCRETE SHOWING IN RELEVANT PARTS: FUCKIN' 5/5.  STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS.
CLEARLY ILLUSTRATES A VALUE/BELIEF: FUCKIN' 5/5
REFLECTION IS INSIGHTFUL AND WELL BALANCED: FUCKIN' 5/5
DIALOGUE SOUND NATURAL AND IS TECHNICALLY CORRECT: FUCKIN' 5/5
ENDING IS SATISFYING AND REINFORCES YOUR POINT: FUCKIN 5/5
FREE FROM GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION ERRORS: 4/5 CUZ I MISSED A DASH SOMEWHERE.


240/250.  SUCK MY HUGE THROBBING DICK, CLASSMATES WHO AREN'T SMART ENOUGH TO GET THIS SHIT.

FUCK YEAH.

Fucking far out!  Way to go, Freeky!

[Freeky]

FUCK YEAH.  I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO SPEAK AND THINK IN ALL CAPS TODAY.

ME = WINNAR

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yay, good job Freeky! Way to go!

[Freeky]

YAYUH.

[Triple Zero]

Whoa, well done FREEKY!!

Enjoy your capital celebrations, you've earned them!

[Freeky]

I pretty much pulled this out of my ass last night over the space of six hours, maybe a bit less.
_________________________________________________

GOVERNMENT? IN MY BANKS!?
(It's more reasonable than you think!)

   In late 2007 to early 2008, after nearly three decades of financial stability, the economy began its catastrophic collapse.  The people of America began asking who was responsible for this.  Well, that's a complicated answer, but the short form is "Too Big to Fail."  "Too Big to Fail" is a term used in reference to major, interconnected banks—primarily Citibank, Bank of America, and CHASE bank.  The term itself is deceitful.  It implies that these banks cannot fail, when in reality they only survived with massive government intervention.  So it was that TARP came to be, and the banks did not become insolvent, and Congress did create the Dodd-Frank Act.  The Dodd-Frank Act brought heavier regulation to the banking sector.  Four years later, matters have stabilized, and the times are less dire, but has enough been done to prevent another financial disaster?  What could be done to bring greater preventative measures to Wall Street and beyond?  Heavier government regulation and reform in the shape of getting rid of "Too Big to Fail" is possibly the financial sector's best hope.

   In the years preceding the 2007 financial crash, America had had incredible financial stability.  According to director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Harvey Rosenblum, over the span of twenty-five years, only five percent of that time period was spent in a recession (4).  The total time was thirty-two months—one 16-month long recession between July 1981 and November 1982, and two 8-month long recessions between July 1990 and March 1991 and March 2001 and November 2001 (NBER.org).  During this time, says Rosenblum, the public sector became complacent, and with that complacency came a relaxing of regulation, "explicitly in law and implicitly in enforcement (4)."  Clearly, a system that relaxes regulation in times of plenty, when it was those same regulations that got the system to good times in the first place, is one that needs more oversight, with a greater sense of foresight.

   The whole episode seems to have started when the housing bubble finally burst, and banks which held garbage loans could not collect on them and went bankrupt.  Rosenblum informs us that policy makers became alarmed when they saw that it was not just small banks, but the large, globally interconnected ones, too, who were greatly affected.  They feared that losing even one of them would lead to a ripple effect, destroying other banks and the economy.  This did happen.  When Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy in 2008, capital markets froze, and it took Congress and TARP to unfreeze the capital and prevent any more huge banks from collapsing(11).  Policy makers weren't wrong to be afraid, but perhaps the collapse could have been prevented with more government control.

   The Dodd-Frank Act was the act of a desperate government.  With the people clamoring for a financial sector fix, and fingers being pointed in every direction (recall the chaos and political strife that year), they wrote a massive restructuring for banks.  However, the legislation was vast and covered many areas of the financial sector, and Rosenblum tells us that dozens of agencies working to turn this legislation into regulation may not be finished until 2013 at the earliest.  So far, the new laws have not helped the economy to recover, "and may have inadvertently undermined growth  by adding uncertainty to the future. (17)"  It seems that this is too little, too late, and too confusing by half.

   An added complication to this revamping is the business of banks.  Banks have lawyers and money and corporate personhood with political pull, all effective at resisting government regulation.  Rosenblum points out these obvious facts, and couples them with the logical assumption that banks will use these things to twist whatever legislation that may be passed to their own benefit (21).  Business is business, and what is a business's purpose other than to make more money?

   The final hurdle to the law working on its own, or without the need for laws and regulations in general, is the human element.  Rosenblum has this very apt observation to offer about people:

"Periodic stresses that roil the financial system can't be wished away or legislated out of existence. They arise from human weaknesses—the complacency that comes from sustained good times, the greed and irresponsibility that run riot without market discipline, the exuberance that overrules common sense, the complicity that results from going along with the crowd. We should be vigilant for these failings, but we're unlikely to change them. They're a natural part of our human DNA." (21)

In other words, people are incapable of working towards what is best for everyone versus what is going to get them the biggest personal reward.  This is the reason laws and governments exist in the first place.

   There those out there who would rather there be less regulation on the financial system on the grounds that companies that make more money will give their employees more money.  Robert Dell, a commercial real estate banker in Atlanta, and Mark Perry, a professor of finance and economics at the University in Michigan, suggest that instead of more laws and regulations, banks instead keep more tangible capital on hand (American.com, More Equity, Less Government: Rethinking Bank Regulation). This seems like a reasonable solution on the surface, until the part of the equation where humans are dealing with more even more amounts of wealth.  One can simply look at what Goldman-Sachs did with their share of TARP money—pay cuts for all employees, huge bonuses for the board!—to see the logic of giving any one business more money when they have proven they can't be trusted with a lesser amount, not to mention that would require printing more money, which would devalue the dollar even further, plunging the country into another recession fueled by huge inflation.

   So what will be required to break up the Too Big to Fail banks?  Rosenblum suggests that it will be breaking up the centralized nature of the Too Big to Fail banks, and the concentration of wealth and capital.  This will not be easy, for a number of reasons he describes.  The first (and biggest) is how to go about breaking them up.  The second is how broken up is safe enough.  The third is that, with as much clout as the financial sector has, Too Big To Fail institutions will fight as hard as they can against any attempt at being broken up (21).  Difficult barriers, indeed.

   The government has already passed legislation restructuring financial institutions and the way in which they may operate, but it will be another year at least before it becomes effective, if indeed it will be.  Another crash and recession such as the one America is slowly pulling itself out of now is unacceptable.  Giving banks more money, real money, is preposterous on several levels.  The only thing that makes sense is to pull power away from and decentralize our wealth that the Too Big To Fail institutions have acquired. 

[Don Coyote]

Very nicely put.