Yes, people still watch the Oscars. 22 year low or not, it was still the second highest rated show of the year behind the Superbowl

My point was that for very little reason, controls are put on business to “protect the consumer”. Note the quotes. The final paragraph is off the point, as I foreshadowed in the first sentence of my post.

If you REALLY think this $700 Billion bailout is going to the little guy, you ar dead wrong. The $700 Billion is going to “buyback” mortgage backed securities that the banks sold to investors based on the Subprime mortgages (some of those returns were 10%+).

Those investors, many of which are foreigners, got a risk free investment at a prime return with absolutely no risk. Granted, if our economy would’ve continued growing the problems would’ve been mostly mitigated. The problem is that MANY or MOST of the subprime mortgages were to people who should’ve never qualified for the home they bought.

I agree that this talk doesn’t belong on TMB. But I warned that in the first sentence.

By the way, I’m not a doom and gloomer. I’m trying to buy about 5 properties this week!

Sorry, but I am uncertain as to how exactly your final paragraph has any link to what the rest of your post is stating…

First of all, why should the Academy have ANY say or control about what is advertised? Shouldn’t the network who paid for the rights to air the Academy Awards get to choose who gets to advertise and what they pay for commercial time?

Part of the problem with this country is that we treat everyone as if they were stupid. (Yes I know there are a lot of stupid people!)
Would the guys from Meet the Spartans make a movie to and market it to take advantage of this removal? Probably? Maybe? Who cares?

I’d fall into the last category, less regulation please. If someone gets hoodwinked into going to a movie called Oscar this or Oscar that, what’s the worst that could happen? They are out at most 12 bucks? Don’t we have better things to do with our time than allowing more controls in our so called “free market”?

I, for one, would love to see the Academy telecast as a sounding board for new movie marketing and concepts rather than limiting one’s approach. Especially, since that’s right before the summer blockbuster kickoff.

Our capitalistic system has been stripped, controlled and taken advantage of so much by Big Business that there really isn’t room anymore for small business. The last bastion of small business (Real Estate) is being stripped as we speak, because Big Business couldn’t keep their paws off of it and made a gigantic mess of it.