Balta1701

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:45 AM) No, its supposed to show that the government can take smart action that benefits itself AND the economy if it is open to taking some chances. Smart, effective policy has very little impact on this discussion.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:45 AM) Balta already cited that negligible figure. After wasting more of my time than I want to admit tallying them up myself from legal settlement reports, the California EPA has collected ~$450,000 in fines for air pollution in 2011 so far.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:42 AM) LOL at that being nationalizing. Its business. Scrape up cheap assets to re-sell later, grant some to private or public use which takes surplus out of circulation... its much more stimulative with better multipliers than the other garbage we did, not to mention that like TARP, the government could make some of the money back and be out of the business over a period of like a decade. Your comparison to TARP is supposed to convince the vocal minority that it isn't the Communist Fascist Kenyan taking over more of the economy?

House Speaker Boehner has offered a sidelining resolution that he hopes he can use to keep an actual War Powers resolution from ever coming to the floor. The Speaker's proposed resolution would essentially express disapproval coming from the House and ask the White House to better explain what they are doing there, however, it would not have the form of a legitimate War Powers Act challenge of the sort that could actually force the White House to withdraw from Libya.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:36 AM) I still think that, if we were going to use taxpayer dollars at all to stimulate the housing market... that instead of using those tax credits and temporary construction jobs, the government should have just flat out bought property directly in a targeted way, with a pass-off and sell-off for various purposes. God yes. But that would have had the government "Paying your neighbors' mortgage" though. And we can't do that, people who screwed up have to suffer.

Seriously, where else should I look? You're claiming that there are tens of billions of dollars in fines for pollution out there that I have no idea where they're at.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:34 AM) I forget the EPA is the only one passing fines and assessing fees For pollution?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:33 AM) Prices have nothing to do with foreclosures? Geesh. We can both hypothesize 2nd and 3rd order effects here where the housing tax credit would have caused fewer foreclosures or more buyers, but man, people go into foreclosure mostly because they can't afford the payment, not strategically because the value of their house has dropped.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:28 AM) I would guess they are actually. In 2010, the EPA assessed a total of $41 million in fines, down from $96 million in 2009. Where else should I be looking for this money?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:29 AM) Forestalling the fall of prices by years has us where we should have been in 2009, right now. But that has nothing at all to do with the rate at which foreclosures were processed through the system. Relative to distressed sales, the tax credits had the exact same effect that price erosion would have had...bringing low-level buyers into the market. I'm impressed here...you're so desperate to blame the government for everything that you've actually got me defending the Housing Tax credit, which was a terrible program and a bad waste of government money.

Oh.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:25 AM) Looks more like 2015 to me, to get back to a 2007-ish or early 2008-ish level, which is what I'd consider "normal" levels. But yeah, its a few years off to get to that point. Just keep in mind that they don't necessarily need to be all the way back to normal for my predicted events to occur. With the huge drops in new homes being built, and continued population increase, the level at which the surplus becomes very low can come pretty quickly, and the demand side will increase as I noted earlier. The uptick I mentioned likely won't happen this year or next, but some time in the couple years after that I think the likelihood starts to go up pretty quickly. -Assuming that nothing else goes wrong.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:20 AM) Assuming that the government doesn't swoop in and delay things another few years again. Although the government delayed the "bottom" of the housing prices clearly...I'm not sure how the federal tax credits could possibly have served to delay the processing of the foreclosure bump. In the case of this data, the federal tax credits probably did help clear some of the inventory by bringing borderline buyers back into the market. The government has clearly exacerbated the situation by allowing the rise of these unaccountable foreclosure mills, and the government could have had a chance to actually fix the situation much sooner by effective policy, but effective policies would have been unfair and provoked a rash of people complaining about "Paying their neighbor's mortgage" so we decided that the best thing to do was have it last 15 years.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:19 AM) That is pretty misleading to include only taxes, and not fines and fees paid for the exact same thing. Do you really think those are large enough to even show up on that graph? 3% of revenue in the U.S. is mostly reflecting things like the gasoline tax. An extra 1% of total revenue would require ~$20 billion a year to be raised in fines and fees.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:17 AM) Premeditated? Take it easy Sabean. You're just lucky you backed into a world championship, because you are one awful GM. For being an awful GM, that franchise keeps producing a ridiculous amount of young talent.

Vultan's Theme (Attack of The Hawk Men)

A new working paper from the IMF shows that the rest of the developed world receives a much higher share of their tax revenue from "Pollution taxes" than the U.S. does. Effectively, its cheaper to pollute in the U.S. than it is anywhere else in the OECD.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 12:18 PM) Now, I think we're going to see a much bigger snap back. I see a situation here where the powder is being overloaded in the gun. Prices continue to plummet... foreclosures are coming off the books pretty nicely... new housing is underperforming, so less supply going on... rental market is very hot, to the point where rent levels are way higher than equivalent mortgage costs in many places. Add it all up, and really, the buyers are waiting on just one thing - easier lending. Once lending loosens significantly, I think you see not a slow recovery, but a pretty quick one. So the question THEN is... when will lending loosen? Swiping a graph. If you project forwards along a line, we'll be through the glut of distressed sales sometime in the range of 2020.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 09:56 AM) Your brain is broken. There are better players out there you could acquire, OR I'd rather have the players we'd need to trade to land Ben freaking Gordon. You are refusing to read or understand what I'm typing it seems, so I'm not going to bother anymore with you on this topic. I f***ing understand the salary cap. If Ben Gordon is on your roster making 11+ million, that is bad cap space being wasted. I stopped caring about efficient use of cap space last offseason. Wasted "Cap space" now is just money that JR has to pay over the luxury tax threshold. If you hate "Wasted cap space" then you must have hated the Boozer deal as much as me.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 09:43 AM) More proof of how the US has the toughest corporate tax structure in the world! And how a lenient corporate tax structure is great for job creation.

They do rock you.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 09:48 AM) If we traded the proposed players to get Ben Gordon, that in itself locks up cap space that can be spent on players who would actually help this team. I don't get your angle, so I'll just say "Ben Gordon suck" one last time and be done with it! No, it doesn't. The Bulls have 3 guys with $12 million+ contracts, and they need to extend Derrick Rose. Under the current rules, there are ZERO situations in which the Bulls can have "salary cap space" to add players without trading away 2 of those players for expiring contracts. It is 100% impossible for the Bulls to have "Salary cap space" which can be spent on additional players. Doesn't matter who the Bulls trade for, unless they dump 2 of those 4 big salaries, they will be dealing entirely with trades and exemptions for the foreseeable future. Under the Current rules, if the Bulls were to trade for Ben Gordon, they'd have exactly the same amount to spend in free agency that they had before the trade, because the only thing available to the Bulls would be the Mid-Level exemption and the Veterans exemptions.

Rock they do.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 09:36 AM) But yeah, let's kill tons of cap space and bring back the fail that is Ben Gordon! Seriously Steve...What Cap Space? I assume you're dealing Noah and Rose for Expiring contracts sometime soon?