Balta1701

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 02:05 PM) I wouldn't want him back next year. With our annual April swoon he'll be a cancer in the clubhouse. Annual? I thought our swoon was always in the 2nd half.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 02:00 PM) He's been injured. In no way does that fact that he's been injured this season mean he will be injured next season as well. But it's absolutely ridiculous to pay a 39 year old guy coming off probably decades of steroid abuse in a way that would only make sense if he is mostly healthy.

Link From a statement released by the driver: Another report says the assailant was quite intoxicated at the time.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 01:27 PM) Well he's 38 years old. This happens to 38 year olds. Again, you have better options for $5-7 million, you go ahead and make a list. Until then, I'm not going to rule Manny out as our DH next year. I wouldn't rule him out as DH next year either but I wouldn't offer him $5-7 million when he's gotten fewer at bats this year than Thome.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 01:32 PM) Here is the problem. Say you are looking at a place for a 150k right now, with the prevailing rate nationally at 4.75%. You are looking at a monthly payment of $782.47, which comes out to a lifetime payment of just over $280k in a regular old 30 year mortgage, without factoring in property taxes, PMI, or insurance. If you do a get a 10% fall in prices again, from where we are at now, but get rates to go back to a much more realistic 6% you actually end up at an $802.39, or over $290k in lifetime payments. You might save the stickerprice, but you are paying 10,000 dollars more in the lifetime of your mortgage payments. The difference is even higher if the fall in prices is lower, or if the rates see any kind of inflationary pressures at all. The key flaw remains...why would interest rates go back towards 6%? Here's a 10 year bond rate graph through yesterday. We're almost back to late-2008 flight to safety numbers on the 10 year bond. If interest rates tick upwards at all, that'll basically resume the housing crash. The only reason why rates would go up is to fight inflation...and that is a long, long way off right now. If the Fed or the Congress decided to get off its tail and do something about unemployment, maybe a few years later once unemployment started pushing back towards 6%, inflation might be more of a concern, but until then, there's a massive unfilled output gap and basically no reason for rates to rise.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 01:28 PM) link? And to me even 1% is small in relation to the amount of "spending" we've done, and the additional amount you want. We were supposed to be no worse than 8%. Oops, we're at 9.5%. Frankly, what that 8% number says is how inadequate their initial estimates were of the true scale of the 2008 shock. Here's an easy link from the top of the Google to answer your question. Here's another with the full data table. The "Change in private nonfarm payrolls" is the private sector number...that's positive 71k. 3 lines down from that is change in government payrolls...which is at -202k. What basically happened in 2009 is that the stimulus offset some of the state-level job losses...but there was still so much contraction at the state level that it nearly completely offset the stimulus effect. Therefore...everything leveled out, but nothing went upwards because states and local governments contracted sharply. Now in 2010 the state aid in the Stimulus is gone, so states are contracting even more sharply and that's becoming a major drag on employment.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 01:26 PM) Ah. And how do you really know they're telling the truth? You have no way of verifying. No, but in the event that i get sick from any of it I've got grounds for a lawsuit.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 12:43 PM) Hopefully Castro plays tonight. Buehrle pitching today, Garcia on Friday? Castro probably plays friday.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 01:18 PM) But that is 3 games. When you look at the big picture, for the numbers you guys are talking about paying the guy, he can take 30 games off a year, and I'll still be happy about his .900 OPS. The real worry is...he's taken a lot more than 30 games off this year.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 01:18 PM) I'm scratching my head with the way your post is worded. If I ask the restaurant if they got their seafood from the gulf and they say no, I'm ok with eating it. If they don't know, I'll have something else.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 01:18 PM) Again, all the billions spent, and last month 130k jobs were lost. How is that progress? It's not...but it's worth noting...the large majority of the job loss were public sector jobs. The private sector still added jobs...the losses were a combination of public sector job losses and the census job losses. That certainly ought to complicate your picture...government is actually shrinking, but that's not leading to economic growth. And anyway...a 0.5% increase in employment is not small...and that's also an underestimate of where most people's numbers put it.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 01:14 PM) Could MLB change the rules to not allow teams to make a profit if they haven't fully spent the revenue shared with them? Almost anything could be collectively bargained...so the Union could certainly make an issue of that. The question is...what would the Union give up to get that? The Union is probably going to make something of an issue about teams like Florida that don't spend their revenue sharing dollars on salary...but they're never going to push for anything resembling a salary floor...because the logical demand from the owners in return is a salary cap.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 10:56 AM) f*** it. Just eliminate seafood from your diet. Frankly, I basically have unless I specifically ask if the product is from the gulf.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 10:38 AM) I'm sure you have heard the saying... People who pick bottoms get s*** on their fingers. In hindsight, what actually amazes me about the last 8 years is how easy it was to call exactly what was going to happen. I mean, I didn't get the tiny details like which bank was going to fail, but in 2004 I was writing that whoever won the Presidential election was screwed in 2008 because there was a massive credit bubble out there, allowing for growth of consumer spending despite the fact that wages were stagnant. In 2003 I decided to rent instead of buy, because I thought California had a housing bubble. In 2005, I moved, but made the same decision. again. About the only thing I think of as a mistake was not realizing how easy it would have been to pick out the peak of the housing bubble. If I'd anticipated that I could have cashed in on the bubble myself. My favorite "the peak is here" story was the "Buy a condo get a prius deal" showing up in more than a few places in California in early 2007...where condo-owners were using the free car as a way of keeping up the nominal sale price but giving the purchaser an extra incentive.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 11:56 AM) it may have added jobs, but more or less the same number of people are unemployed from the time the stimulus bill was signed. I dunno how you can say the stimulus alone slowed the rate of job loss. The question then is...why did job loss turn around basically in March 2009?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 12:49 PM) Another theory is that people are simply looking at the insane rates they are paying on credit cards, and realizing that pretty much anything else is better than that. Another portion of that is that the remaining few people with good credit are able to refinance it downwards to lower rates right now.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 10:39 AM) I don't see how anyone can doubt that the Stim bill did indeed have a positive impact on overall employment. That, to me, isn't even the discussion to have. Then why do we hear it so regularly?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 10:35 AM) I find this silly. Trying to find an exact bottom is something generally not smart with any investment, real estate or otherwise. Seems clear to me that some time in the 2009-2011 period will end up being a bottom for the market, that's what pretty much everyone is saying. I said that last year. Its going a little later than I would have guessed (I think I said late 2009 or early 2010 originally), but again, you should really shoot for general timeframes on this market, not high precision. If you wait too long, mortgage rates will start to go up (they HAVE to, because interest rates HAVE to go up somewhat soon, and inflation with it). If I were you, if you see youself buying somewhere in the next couple years, I'd start bargain hunting now (lots of foreclosures and distressed properties to choose from), and jump at something when it looks to you like the place you want. I'm perfectly fine going in a little bit early, versus trying for perfection and getting socked with a bigger mortgage. I don't think that one was shooting for the bottom...I think that one was realizing that the government distortion on the market was going to be temporary and potentially very damaging in the medium-term. I still think there's 10-20% to lose in a lot of markets before an equilibrium is reached...but from late this year on, It's much more of an open question when that'll be hit. I think though that when the government offers you an extra $8000, you're going to pay extra on the place to make sure you take advantage of that credit...but once the credit vanishes, some portion of that value is going to immediately vanish.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 10:33 AM) how can someone hate Manny "as a person" we dont know him. We know he's a millionaire cheater/fraud. That's a pretty easy one.

QUOTE (IceCreamPants @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 10:28 AM) What good is it to have one of the fastest ,effecient, and powerful engines on a car when the wheel alignement is f***ed up. That was GM's business plan for about 2 decades.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 10:22 AM) He didn't average 100+ at SDSU either. He had ocassionally hit it, but college and minor leage guns, and even guns around the league tend to all be different by a few ticks. Stras also pitched on longer rest in college too. But...are there any data that would make you argue that Stras has actually been going more all-out-effort on his fastball this year? Maybe his fastball isn't down this year (i think it is a bit but that's arguable)...but it's not like he was throwing 94-95 on easy-toss last year and pushed it to 97.5 once he got to the bigs by upping the effort.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 10:14 AM) New home sales= 276k vs 334k exp. M/M change -12.2%. What was it that that Biden said,.....oh yeah,"recovery summer" Can I also add that it's exactly this plunge that I was expecting when I decided to continue renting upon switching jobs late last year rather than trying to cash in the tax-credit?

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 10:16 AM) It wasnt down when he faced the sox He wasn't regularly punching 102 was he? His average fastball has been 97.5. That's a great fastball, but it's not 100+.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 10:16 AM) I can't see the Sox signing Manny for next year. He doesn't really fit with the philosophy of the team, and if he has a good last month of the season (wherever he plays), he will probably want more money than the Sox would be willing to spend on a 39 year old DH with injury issues of late. What Manny is going to want is going to differ hugely from what Manny is going to get offered.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 25, 2010 -> 10:10 AM) If they do acquire him, I sure as hell hope they don't sign him for 2011. If it's a 1 year deal as a DH only...and it's only like $2 million...and Manram actually signs the deal rather than just outright retiring...I think I could stomach that. I'd still reserve the right to chant "Steroids" every time he's up.