For those of you madly searching the miscellaneous topics for threads concerning banking, finance, investing and the like (ahem) those threads have a NEW HOME!

Go out to the Forum List page and scroll down to the bottom section entitled "Finance". There are three new forums to be found there, and those threads concerning financial issues can now be found there as well.

These new forums will be a bit more 'opt-in' than others on the board for the simple reason that we want clear delineation from the boating and miscellaneous topics. So, none of the threads from this area will show up in the 'new topics' or 'recent topics' list. If you want to see what's happening (or not!) on these fora, you will have to click into them from the main page. (For those of us who's 'home' page is the 'recent topics' list, this will require new behavior...

For a bit more 'color': these forums are for grownups. Young men of college age are, of course, welcome! But the 10-year-old daughter-on-your-lap standard long (and permanently) in place for the boating board is suspended here. If the language is a little saltier, a wider latitude of address will be given and expected. What IS still expected is respect for your fellow correspondents. No flaming, trolling, or sock-puppeting.

Along with that wider latitude is the expectation that the skin is a bit thicker on the new forums. These are contentious issues. We're talking about YOUR MONEY. And some of the forces and machinery that impact that money's value and availability. So a double dose of patience and 'allowance' for a different viewpoint is encouraged. There will be a high value accorded to SOURCED DATA. Ivory tower think tanks have one kind of 'weight', government statistics another. Bloggers have one kind of cache, CNBC a whole different kind. Quoting from and citing any and all of those is encouraged, but the citations and data sources allow all your readers and correspondents to measure the weight they, personally, will assign your sources and stated points of view.

A bit about politics. FINANCE is NOT POLITICS! Now, one can hardly talk about money without shouldering into politics to some degree, but let me be clear about this. There is no forum on this board catering to partisan political posts of any sort. "Bush bankrupted the country!" "The Dems bankrupted us with their entitlements!" And ALL SUCH PRONOUNCEMENTS will be summarily dusted and the offending poster warned abruptly. That said, you cannot talk about these issues without referring to people who hold political office. The FACT that a serious number of Treasury officials have had long careers at Goldman Sachs can hardly be avoided. Speaking of Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Chris Dodd, George Bush and other senior players on this stage is not evidence of 'political commentary'. We'll explore the boundary going forward, but I hope this note gives a 'sense' of where we'd like to go. It is well to remember that we are talking about GLOBAL phenomena, and the whole, wide world is partaking of the results created in the world's financial centers. Millions of dollars in political support pour into the coffers of EVERY party's participants from the financial community. So let's keep our eye on the ball and leave the electioneering to the sites set up for that purpose.

It remains to be seen whether a group assembled out of a love of boats and boating finds sustained value in financial commentary and discovery. If it serves the interests of a group of participants it will have some legs. The value will be added by those who participate in the discussion.

I'm looking forward to your opinions, points of view, and sharp-eyed discoveries.

Eric Hanson
aka FLB

Ok, I'll be the first.. I'm not seeing it.

Agree with da Bcat. I even closed out my browser and relaunched, just to force another login. Still don't see any new forums.

no joy Kelly

Well----I MAY have jumped the gun. I see it on my machine, but Mike may just have put it up so I could begin transferring files. I've GOT the keys to the control panel, but in the interest of public safety I generally leave that door closed.

I'll go have a look around and see if I can figure out how to make it go live. If NOT, we'll get the big guy to do it when he gets back to his computer.

In the meantime, I've got a few new items to post over there. BTW, does anybody want to show me how to embed video files (you tube and google). We have a button, but I'm obviously not doing it correctly.

It's a cake walk, FLB.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QNUoEqQaV3k

Take everything AFTER the =, and put it in the dialog box that pops up for Youtube embed.

A couple of software versions ago, I decided to learn a bit more about the control panel. Took the whole site down for 15 minutes before I figured out what I did!

[video:youtube]tebO2v3qBVY[/video]

test...

[video:youtube]v=tebO2v3qBVY[/video]

test 2...

Ahh, perhaps not. Try the whole url.

Ok, you got me.

So far three tries, no luck. I've copied the entire url (as the directions indicate), from the = sign to the end, and from the ? to the end. No dice...

Do one for me?

Thanks, Capn. How'd you do it???

Err, agree with siding with cowardice, err, caution

Or would Opus know?

no help Kelly