Senior Carter, everyone is an expert on something.  Some are expert on everything - know it alls whatever the subject.  We all know at least one of those.

Expert:  Ex is a has-been;  spurt is a drip under pressure.

I was ignorant until I saw the movie Zietgiest.  I thought the "Federal Reserve" was an official government agency, and calling it the "central bank" was it's nickname.  Now I understand what all of the anger is about it. 

Perhaps the mission should be to inform people that the control of the currency is done by a private agency, that it is no better than a "promisary note" as far as the exchange of it for goods and services, and backed by nothing tangable.  We are beholden to the whim of bankers, and there is nothing we can do about it. 

I have to say that a whole lot about American society has been opened to me.  I did not understand the concept of "living beyound one's economic means" before, and why saving and not being wasteful with resourses was not promoted by the government for a sustained future.  I did not understand why learning to maintain items such as your auto are not promoted over and above buying a new one every year, and how "designed obsolete" had been so deeply implaned in this culture.  I think that this culture has been socially engineered to stay in debt.

Tom Carter...I like your avatar.  I have always loved "Top Cat" ("Boss Cat" in Syria) I thought is one of the best Hanna Barbera animations, and they had alot of them that were wonderful.  I can sing the Arabic translation of the opening music to this day.  (Zanubiyah telling her age)  Perhaps it tells us something about American culture.  If animated pictures geared toward children were based on the premise that the "social jokes" would be understood by them like the ones in "Boss Cat", and we compare them to the "bathroom jokes" in children's animated pictures now, it bothers me how far we have digressed in this society in about 40 years.  Perhaps this is another point that the movie Zeitgiest has brought to the surface, a deliberate "dumbing down" of critical thinking that makes us robots to the very few who control the world.

TC...just to let you know, animations from America were banned in 1973 along with other American things including products, music, even soda for obvious reasons and have remained so every since.  I remember the total and sweeping changes we went through.  All through that, we still admired the Americans, loved their freedom but knew the difference between the government policies and the American people.  I know that that is still true today.