Balta1701

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 04:08 PM) If there was no demand, they wouldn't be making any money. What you're saying and reality aren't meshing. There is obvious demand, because people are giving them money for what it is they do. I think the time has come for all -- including those of us on this board -- to stop bickering about our relatively minor differences of opinion and to start wondering what it is we will be doing when they bring the system (and the world) down around us. I can still remember posting somewhere here in 2008 that if the world is destroyed because of Credit Default Swaps, I'll be pretty annoyed.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 04:05 PM) Businesses are still sitting on record piles of cash. Your argument would only work if they were barely making a profit and had no room to hire additional people or invest in expansion. Instead they're making money hand-over-fist but there's still no demand out there. if we write more and more complicated rules, they'll have to spend more and more of that money they're sitting on paying people to do compliance. That's a job creation strategy!

But it's a lot less profitable than having the simple Glass Steagell wall between deposit banks and investment banks, for example.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:46 PM) Do you have any idea what a Wall Street firm's compliance looks like or costs? Heck forget even wall street, as a public firm, do you have any idea what compliance does to a firm? A firm I am running a compliance examination on right now told me that we were one of eighteen examinations going on for them right now. Do you understand what more rules and regulations would do to them? I know your response to uncertainty is to run out, spend your savings, and then open up a few credit cards to max out, but that isn't how it works in the real world, at all. You already know that you'll get me to agree that the current rules aren't working, but you disagree with my case that they don't work because Wall Street loves it this way. They are happy to hire people like you to do compliance work as long as the rules aren't actually strong enough to affect anything. There's actually a remarkable example of this happening right now. Dodd Frank included over 25 deadlines to finish writing 180 rules supposedly to try to fix the mess from 2008. It was set up this way because if the rules were just passed by Congress, lobbyists couldn't work to rewrite them. Not a single one of those deadlines has been met, and only about 30 of the rules have actually been written, most after, you guessed it, an intense lobbying period. No one cares about uncertainty in regulation when compared with regulations that might actually require things like safety in the financial system or an element of control to risks that are taken. They're more than happy to drag out the uncertainty for years if they can lobby on it a little bit harder. The worst thing a Wall Street firm can conceive of is a simple rule that constrains their ability to take home as much money as possible when times are good as a safety measure. That's where this mess comes from. That's where your compliance complaints come from. We see it every time there's a consideration of anything. Deregulation is easy and wonderful until 1998, 2001, or 2008 hits and it turns out we could have used the simple rule. Instead, we get a complicated, lobbyist written rule with enough holes in it that a few extra compliance jobs are treated as a writeoff.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:32 PM) OMG NO, NOW I AM A COMMIE TOO! Once you accept that premise, then the logic that they're not investing because Obama wasn't nice enough to them becomes the object of ridicule that we keep treating it as.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:23 PM) I acknowledge that the system has become utterly dependent on the government. That is 100% obvious when you view this "recovery" along the stimulus time line. But you didn't edit out the phrase that says it has become dependent on the government because the Job Creators have taken up such a large share of the country's wealth and income.

Wait, did 2k5 just acknowledge that the "Job creators" have taken up such a large fraction of the income over the past 30 years that it has caused a problem?

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:12 PM) I now look forward to Thursdays that contain no White Sox baseball. I'm seeing the Barons @ the Smokies tonight.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 02:50 PM) Which is what they really need to do. I truly wonder what KW can do, however, with the number of bad contracts the Sox have. Ridding the team of Rios would be a huge step. Even if the Sox had to pay 50%+ of his remaining salary. The wierd thing about our bad contracts is...they're not for people who are so old you'd say that they're finished. That makes a couple things happen. If you get a brief spurt of decent performance out of either of the main problem guys next year, they might suddenly become more moveable than they are right now, to the point where a team might even gamble on their whole contract. On the other hand...it's hard to look at a guy who's 32 or younger and say "clearly he's finished so we should spend $25 million to get him off the team".

QUOTE (Paulstar @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 02:21 PM) What I took from Ozzie Jr.'s quote was pretty much him implying that this is a fan base and specifically this site is filled with racists. Now it does happen, but I bet someone would have to spend all day to find a handful of blatantly racist quotes about Ozzie Guillen on this site, or all the other sox sites combined. Remember, these guys are on twitter and have email accounts too...I wouldn't doubt that they get stuff on those accounts that should never be typed by any decent human being.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 02:25 PM) How long does Obama & Co continue to be blue-sky optimists with respect to the economy? I haven't a clue, but they should have been trying to do something for more than a year now. Even if they're completely stymied by Congress, at least get out and say what you'd do.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 02:20 PM) I believe Hawk would call this post "Right size, wrong shape" Call it whatever you want, this is the exact effect you should get if there's no reason to expect growth anywhere and a high chance for expecting losses, and the moves by the U.S. Congress, Federal Reserve, and ECB have made that reality. High chance for losses, once again a flight to safe assets, and limited expectations for growth anywhere. And since the Debt limit deal was even more contractionary than anyone would have guessed a month ago...well, there you go.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 02:05 PM) If it were purely about what you are implying, the dollar wouldn't be up a handle, and gold would be up like crazy. Then I really need to start my own investment house, because this was pretty darn easy to predict. I believe my exact post was somewhere in the Dem thread saying that I'd have been moving my money to Treasuries/cash late in the spring and early in the summer except for the fact that I was scared Congress would actually figure out some way to default.

QUOTE (Paulstar @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 02:10 PM) I love how the Guillen family continually criticizes the fan base with no repercussions. If people are genuinely making anti-hispanic remarks or even threats against the Guillens, then they have every right to criticize them, and there's plenty of reason to think that stuff does happen. We just don't want it here.

So, how far does the market have to fall before it gets policy-makers attention?

You have to be able to make your own fun out of it. For example, in Dunn's 2nd at bat on Monday against captain cheeseburger, he went down 0-1 in the count, and I started typing that he would strike out on 3 pitches in a race to post that before he struck out on 3 pitches. I only narrowly lost!

An LLC firm with no apparent reason for existence, name, or valid address associated with it popped up a few months ago, gave $1 million to Mitt Romney's Superpac, then vanished before its contribution would be publicly reported.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 10:55 AM) Thank you Doctor Psychology. Well, at least someone is missing the point.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 10:54 AM) Didn't we used to have anti-Muslim av's here? We cleared them out very rapidly and suspensions were issued.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 10:47 AM) Since we have an email, should we all respond to it? Perhaps one well-written letter forwarded from 100 different email addresses? No one's going to listen to a form letter any more than they will listen to a letter if you swear at them. If you want an email to be read, write a polite email, make your points as effectively as you can, keep it civil, educated, and readable.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 10:44 AM) But that is the nature of a message board, unfortunately, because there is very little accountability. Then we can't hold up our hands and say "who, me?" if we get misquoted about something that shouldn't have been written in the first place.

I enjoyed a very entertaining episode of Leverage once I saw the score in the 3rd inning.

QUOTE (Pants Rowland @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 10:37 AM) I agree that we get that here from time to time but the hyperbole Junior threw out in that article makes a giant jump from subtle racism to "go home Mexican!" I know Junior is respected to a decent level here but this reeks of the Guillen family using their media access to deliberately attempt to discredit a site that has now become fairly unanimous in its anti-Oney stance and pretty lopsided in its calls for the end of the Ozzie era. I am not sure he was making a mistake in calling out SoxTalk versus some other forum. yes, there is a giant leap from the type of things that are actually said to what this member of the Guillen family is quoted as describing, no one will disagree with that. However, you should also note that there are things posted here that we don't feel compelled to remove immediately that, if they were read by say, a member of the press or a member of the actual team or their family, would really get to them. It's entirely possible that Jr. read something like that and stretched it or interpreted it another way for this quote. That's sorta why we had that whole "Hyperbole" thread discussion. We go through this every year. We don't want to block everyone for everything they say in anger/emotion, but it'd be really nice if people thought through the type of post you're describing there before sending it.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 10:22 AM) If not Ozzie then Carlton Fisk Why on Earth would we expect that he would be an acceptable manager? Heck, when Sandberg was trying to get the Cubs job he spent years managing in the minors for them trying to convince them that he had managerial experience.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 10:24 AM) I'd guess that he didn't want to be the mop up guy again so he got himself tossed. That'd be dumb of him. He's drawing a 400k+ salary as long as he's in the big leagues. That's got to be several times what he'd earn if he got removed from the roster.