Welcome to Financial Ripples.

This first blog on my site will serve as an introduction.  I'll tell you what sort of things that we'll talk about, what you and I can gain here, and some simple rules of conduct.

I intend for this blog to be generally about the economy and investing as well as whatever topics are tangentially related to the broader economy such as politics, law and societal trends.  I chose the name Financial Ripples because I view the economy as being the sum of effects (many of them nonlinear) of many different competing forces. If you want to talk about monster trucks please try to help the rest us understand just how this societal trend can affect the economy and why it is newsworthy.

My own rule of thumb on on whether or not something is newsworthy is "will this matter 10 years from now?".  So an NFL coach getting fired really won't matter to most people in 10 years,  but vast changes to the healthcare laws or Google dominating yet another aspect of the online universe will have significant effects on our lives.

I hope that this blog can serve as a place to exchange ideas.  I'll share my ideas as a starting point.  If you think that there's some point that I've missed please add to it.  Even if I disagree with you I'll be glad that you contributed to the conversation.  It probably helps my brain grow stronger if I have to go through a reasoned counterexample to your arguments, rather than reading a post that says little more than "True dat!".

Please take the time to register.  It's the only way I know of to keep out the spammers and ads for "make money fast" or Viagra or other worthless noise.  The registration process is quick and painless.  Since we're going to end up talking about some political topics many of us will naturally disagree because we're on the right or left.  It's good to disagree, but one important rule will be that we won't sink to the level of ad hominem attacks.  So clearly Keith Olberman and Bill O'Reilley would probably have their comments deleted.  Also,
please try to keep your comments under 500 words. With that said please feel free to share some of your thoughts with others and write a few sentences!