What role does "financial literacy" play in your country?

[Prezbucky]

This is fun -- using cows to explain different economic systems (or those of different countries/states):
--------------------

Explaining Economics with Cows

LIBERAL
- You have two cows.
- Your neighbor has none.
- You feel guilty for being successful.
- Instead of giving your neighbor one of your cows, you write to your congressman, demanding that he pass legislation for more government programs to help your neighbor get a cow.
- You hold a concert to raise awareness for the cow-lessness.
- Barbara Streisand sings for the cow-less, who couldn't attend because ticket prices are so expensive that only people with 3 or 4 cows can afford to attend.
- You wear a ribbon that signifies that you care about cowless people, even though you really haven't done anything to help them at all.

CONSERVATIVE
- You have two cows.
- Your neighbor has none.
- So?

SOCIALIST
- You have two cows.
- The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
- You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
- You have two cows.
- The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
- You wait in line for hours to get it.
- It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
- You have two cows.
- You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
- You have two cows.
- The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
- You have two cows.
- The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
- You have two cows.
- You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
- You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
- You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
- You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have down sized and are reducing expenses.
- Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION
- You have two cows.
- You go on strike because you want three cows.
- You go to lunch and drink wine.
- Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
- You have two cows.
- You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
- They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
- Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
- You have two cows.
- You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
- Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
- You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
- While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
- You break for lunch.
- Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
- You have two cows.
- You have some vodka.
- You count them and learn you have four cows.
- You have some more vodka.
- You count them again and learn you have eight cows.
- The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION
- You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
- You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.
- Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they were in the hospital.

IRAQI CORPORATION
- You have two cows.
- They go into hiding.
- They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION
- You have two bulls.
- Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

CALIFORNIAN
- You have a cow and a bull.
- The bull is depressed.
- It has spent its life living a lie.
- It goes away for two weeks.
- It comes back after a taxpayer-paid sex-change operation.
- You now have two cows.
- One makes milk; the other doesn't.
- You try to sell the transgender cow.
- Its lawyer sues you for discrimination.
- You lose in court.
- You sell the milk-generating cow to pay the damages.
- You now have one rich, transgender, non-milk-producing cow.
- You change your business to beef.
- PETA pickets your farm.
- Jesse Jackson makes a speech in your driveway.
- Cruz Bustamante calls for higher farm taxes to help "working cows."
- Hillary Clinton calls for the nationalization of 1/7 of your farm "for the children."
- Gray Davis signs a law giving your farm to Mexico.
- The L.A. Times quotes five anonymous cows claiming you groped their teats.
- You declare bankruptcy and shut down all operations.
- The cow starves to death.
- The L.A.Times' analysis shows your business failure is Bush's fault.

(from ihatedemocrats.com)
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Jamie (K)]