Balta1701

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 01:31 PM) Shouldn't say "not prone" but "less prone". The problem is, and most people seem to ignore this, is that I guarantee it's infinity cheaper for me to insure my home in Chicago, than is for someone to insure a home of equal value in one of these disaster zones. The New Madrid fault is probably the most dangerous fault line in the US, however, it's SO dormant, it baffles scientists as to why it hardly moves anymore. Average fault lines move like 1-2 inches a year...the new Madrid moves like 0.14 inches, which is uncommon. My numbers could be off on that, because I'm repeating from memory, but they're probably not far off. The New Madrid is so dormant, insurance companies don't even consider it a risk at this point. Do you really want me to go after this? I'll need to get to it tomorrow since I have an eyeglass appointment today, but seriously I can go into it if people would like.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 12:20 PM) "Obama plans" being an interesting way to put it. Nonetheless, I think it's brilliant. If the Republicans want to hold us hostage on something they should have no say in anyway, then Obama should have an equally ridiculous yet absurdly legal trump card. If they wanted to make changes to the budget, they should have negotiated over the budget. Obama was going to give them hefty spending cuts that they're now going to have to make asses of themselves to fight for. Just for reference, I think this is a terrible idea. It may be technically legal per the letter of the law, but doing this technique leaves the government open to a court challenge on its legality. Clearly allowing for the creation of a trillion dollar coin was not the intent of the original law, and therefore, it's entirely plausible that a judge could rule at some point after minting the coin that the process was not legal. Even if it was challenged up the chain...that single ruling could throw the entire economy into chaos, because the government would have been paying its bills illegally. Even if there's only a small chance of it happening...it's like an asteroid impact. It might be surprising, but are you really willing to risk the stability of the entire global financial system on a bet that no court will rule against it?

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 11:38 AM) So Mark Sanchez is staying in NY? (Honestly, yes he probably is. The cap hit to cut him is something like >$10 million this year).

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 12:49 PM) Arod is another great example here. He still has 5 years and $114 million remaining on his deal that he signed when he was the best player in all of baseball and coming off of a season where he hit .314, slugged .645, had an OPS of 1.067, and hit 54 homers while driving in 156. Think the Yankees would like a do-over on that one? Didn't they win their world series after signing him to that deal? If so...I'd think the answer is no.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 09:42 AM) They haven't used everything at their disposal. They've had a relatively weak fiscal policy. We've also been dealing with a global recession and various responses to it (mostly bad, see Europe) that affect our economy as well. They've had relatively weak monetary policy also, compared to the depths of the problem.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 09:39 AM) And yet despite all of that, we STILL haven't had a meaningful recovery after going on five years now. The Fed and the Fed government have used everything at their disposal, and here we still sit, the private sector in shambles. Diminishing marginal return. Just to say again...not even close. They used everything there was political will, on both sides, to do.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 09:34 AM) People say that about bringing hitters in here, but who have we seen that USCF jump from in the last few years? Dunn has put up the two worst years of his career. Rios has put up one really good year after being here for 3+ years, and one year that was about his average in Toronto (.791 vs .786 OPS). Carlos Quinten actually put up a much better OPS in SD than he did in any year in Chicago since 2008. Swisher bombed here, though most of that seems to be on Guillen. The last hitter I can really remember breaking out here was Jermaine Dye. I'm not saying he'd be better than average or get better solely by playing at the Cell. I'm saying that most players have some level of home/road split, because of things like being comfortable in the ballpark, knowing the batters eye, knowing the speed of the grass, being able to sleep in your own bed rather than a hotel. So I don't think he'd just be a .735 OPS guy playing in the Cell instead of Coors... But I also agree that he wouldn't put up a >1.000+ OPS at the Cell like he has at Coors.... Unless the fact that he's entering his prime years really helped. Basically, I think that if he's the same player he was last year, we'd be looking at a CF with a mid-.800's OPS, Give or take. That's a useful piece, but it's not worth giving up Sale for.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 09:28 AM) The only reason interest rates are where they are is because the Federal Reserve has purchased, and is sitting on, something like $3 trillion in bonds. There is literally no other choice to go to. The Fed also hasn't quit buying bonds. They are still spending $40 billion a month in bond buys, indefinitely. But when they stopped buying bonds...when QE2 ended...there was no spike in bond yields. The federal reserve sat there for a year doing nothing other than holding what it already had...the government printed another trillion dollars in bonds...and the yields continued to drop (and, in fact, the stagnant recovery stalled farther). This is a pretty excellent test of your theory, and the exact opposite of what you'd predict happened. This is what is actually normal during a crisis, a flight to a safe asset. This one, IMO it's more than likely worse, because 2008 was defined by the evaporation of so-called AAA safe assets. With good reason, no investor worth their salt would trust anything created by the financial industry as an investment option to be anything but fraud. So we actually have a double-effect...the normal crisis level flight to safety, combined with evaporation of the safety of most of the so-called safe assets. We're no where near satiating that demand.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 09:17 AM) You are leaving out the Federal Reserve's ledger. Which doesn't translate the same way as $1 of federal spending. Federal government goes out and spends $1, $1 is spent. Federal Reserve buys $1 in mortgage backed securities, it alters the balance sheet for mortgage backed securities, changing the value of that asset, but many steps are involved before that could filter down to money being spent somewhere. Also, since you mentioned that government spending was "Crowding out" other spending, it's worth noting again the complete lack of any evidence for this, given that the private sector will literally pay the government interest in order to borrow from it right now, for a period of 10 years. Your response of course will be "Yes, but QE2!", which could have played a role...but the complete lack of any spike in bond yields when the Federal Reserve stopped buying up bonds is pretty strong evidence that the private sector is ridiculously desperate for "Safe" assets and has been so since 2008 (when all their AAA assets they had been counting on were revealed to be garbage).

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 08:49 AM) Its not about trading Viciedo, if you look at the stats Gonzalez has put up on the road over his entire career, they are pretty much identical to what Dayan Viciedo put up last year for a fraction of the price. If we want to be fully honest though...lots of guys put up better numbers at home than on the road. Saying that .735 OPS is what he'll put up playing in the Cell is probably underestimating what he'd actually do...but he's also not likely to match his 1.003 OPS at home if he's not at Coors. The answer would likely be somewhere in the middle. The big question is whether he has something better than what he's shown already to give. A CF giving a mid-.800's OPS is a pretty useful piece, worth his contract, but not worth giving up Sale for. But he's also only 26. One more step next season and you could be back to talking about him as a legit MVP, even without Coors...but given that he's only making $18 million the next 2 seasons, the price for him right now would involve Sale.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 09:11 AM) This recession has seen probably at least $5 trillion thrown at it, and we still haven't really recovered by any historical standard. The spending has been ineffective because of crowding out by all of the other government spending. It is diminishing marginal return at its finest. Safety net spending isn't safety net anymore. It is support the economy spending because government has curbstomped the private sector's ability to survive without being gigantic and utilizing economies of scale for survival. The recession has had ~$4 trillion in federal spending thrown at it, offset by >$1 trillion in state and local level cutbacks...but that's compared to a housing bust that blew up $10 trillion in wealth.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 09:09 AM) their bombs failed, didn't they? And everyone in this country should thank God they did.

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 02:23 AM) Can anyone shed some light on working at Union Pacific? For anyone that might be considering career change? Can you make a career out of it or stay away? What type of position?

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 3, 2013 -> 08:03 PM) BOB is amazing. I'm actually watching the Pacific for the first time right now. Pretty good. Nowhere near BOB (which is just epic). Did you get that through Netflix? I'd love to catch the last 1/2 of that but I have no idea where else to rent it and I'm not a Netflix member.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jan 3, 2013 -> 11:04 PM) Yet we don't think he used drugs. And when was the last time someone went through the effort to bomb a school? Columbine, I believe.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 08:42 AM) We have a long term problem already. As we have seen with this recession, the economy is now utterly dependent on the government's spending. Some deficit is fine, the problem is the whole system is now dependent on it. The other problem that we have seen is unless you have straight line growth, you will have times when the debt and deficit take up way larger pieces of the economy, because of the crowding out of the public sector by government. Why do you think each successive recession has become harder and harder to get out of, with a flatter recovery, despite having more money put into it? So what you're saying is, it's a terrible idea to continue cutting taxes and running deficits in years like 2003-2007 when there is a growing economy? Agreed. On the 2nd question...why it's been harder to get out of each recession...a number of reasons, just off the top of my head. Deregulation of the financial industry has made the shocks of the past 30 years much deeper than the previous 40 years. The Federal Reserve has prioritized keeping inflation low over job growth since the 1980's, leading to an era where the fed has less "ammunition" to fight against contraction. The "Safety-net", which could also be accurately described as automatic stabilizers (spending that kicks in or that people can rely on when the private sector contracts) has been increasingly dismantled, exposing more people directly to the business cycle in a way that pushes more people over the edge when downturns happen. Increasing income inequality has left the lower and middle classes with less money to respond to low-interest rate environments by making purchases, while the upper incomes have been able to insulate themselves from similar shocks using government protections.

Awww (Senator Chris Murphy, D-CT, and family)

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 08:45 AM) Since the government has now become the mitigator of disaster, it should be the people who choose to live in dangerous zones of the country (flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, etc) who subsidize their own dangerous lifestyles. The people who live on the waterfront are pretty wealthy. If we make them pay for their own insurance, they'll get angry and take their job-creating skills elsewhere.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 3, 2013 -> 04:21 PM) Could be, but justified homicide is by its nature going to be less likely given the pretty high burden you have to meet. And yet, they find that lowering the standard for justifiable homicide, like SYG does by definition, is not associated with a strong increase in justifiable homicide in those states either. They find an increase of between 1 and 5 justifiable homicides reported out of the increase in 500 to 700 dead.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 3, 2013 -> 04:17 PM) Did you look at the original study? What does he mean by "police statistics?" Just because the City of Chicago classifies a shooting as a homicide doesn't mean later on at trial that can't become a justifiable homicide. For all we know he's using what police initially think of a case, not the end result. No, they use what is reported to the FBI after trial.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 3, 2013 -> 04:14 PM) And really I don't see how that increase jives with concealed carry laws. Why wouldn't homicides in concealed carry states, versus Illinois for example, be higher? It's the availability of the gun in the vigilante scenario, not the availability of a defense. People don't sit there and ponder whether they can get away with shooting someone to death in the middle of an altercation. They don't think "hey, this is a close call, maybe I can get away with it!" They do the shooting and then try to use the SYG law as a defense, just like they would try to use any potentially available defense at their trial. I don't buy that having SYG on the books makes people more likely to shoot someone else. There's another explanation out there that just hasn't been found. The simple fact is, your assessment of people's psychology simply doesn't agree with the data. The law creates a situation where people are more likely to consider pulling and using a weapon. It pours out every time anyone looks at this data.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 3, 2013 -> 04:09 PM) Which would be interesting, but it appears your study looked at how police classified the shootings, not the eventual trier of fact at a trial. If the police lose such a case, then it would be listed as a justified homicide (that's why you don't use data for the current year). However, if the person settled in exchange for some jail time, it would not be listed as a justified homicide...because the person was convicted of a crime and went to jail.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 3, 2013 -> 04:04 PM) That could be an explanation, and another is the way police officers classify the deaths. How you would classify the Martin situation would differ from me, for example. Either way, you can't make the conclusion that SYG laws = you're going to die if you get into an altercation. That one is actually going to be easy. If he wins his "Self-defense hearing", it will be classified under the federal statistics as a justifiable homicide which would have been counted as such. If he goes to jail, then it will not be.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 3, 2013 -> 04:00 PM) We'll agree to disagree on the first part of that response, but with regards to the study that's basically a "we don't know" answer. No it's not. It's a "We can rule out actual self defense" but the other causes stand.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 3, 2013 -> 03:51 PM) If I remember right, I looked at those studies the first time you posted that and none of them stood for the fact that 7-9% more VICTIMS die, but rather deaths generally increased 7-9%. If that's the case and the majority of that increase is the criminals dying, who cares? The problem is...there's no net increase in "justified homicides" in those same states. If it was just "Criminals" dying, then you'd see a dramatic surge in justifiable homicides; that death toll is more than the total number in the country. What you see instead is an increase in homicide with very little increase in justifiable ones. That means it's not just criminals dying. It means that 1 of 2 things is happening. Either you have the case where a crime is being committed and the law being passed makes the victim of that crime more likely to die, or you have the case where there is an altercation and the law being passed makes someone more likely to pull a gun and shoot the other, like the little Caesar's case where a fight over how slow the pizza was ended up with someone being shot. Those cases are the norm. The vigilante fantasy is the exception. It is staring you in the face in this data, and every way you look at it, you see the same result.