Balta1701

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 15, 2010 -> 09:00 AM) Sketchy s*** indeed, but not for the reasons you might think. What I haven't seen dug into yet in articles on this topic, is the most important point - why did Greece not show these debt obligations on their books properly? Might be Greece's fault, might be Goldman's fault, might be both. The transactions and deals themselves are perfectly legal, albeit risky. The issue is that Greece seems to have "forgotten" to show the full story in their accounting. Finding out who cooked those books, when, and how, is the key to understanding who was at fault here. The suggestion from both official press reports I've read is that there was a quasi-loophole in the EU rules that allowed Greece to not show these loans on their books if GS structured them in a certain way. Basically, its everyone's fault, Greece wanted to get more into the financial wizardry game, Goldman was happy to enable them in exchange for a very lucrative contract to make sure they didn't break the official rules.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Feb 15, 2010 -> 08:52 AM) Smith said another person was chastised for not buying an additional seat as well. Quite a difficult policy for SW to enforce without ruffling a lot of feathers Since when does an airline care about ruffling feathers? (Literally or figuratively).

Simon Johnson thinks GS is in deep S***.

I figured that'd get you riled up. The opportunity to defend big business. Wouldn't matter if they were denying health insurance to someone or bringing down the global financial system and then being bailed out by the government...as long as they're profitable, they're worth of a strong defense.

This team, as constructed, could win it all if everything goes right. This team, as constructed, can't take having 1 or 2 guys not at the top of their game.

Link

QUOTE (joeynach @ Feb 14, 2010 -> 06:10 PM) Yeah but those doubles or even outs hit to the 385 foot gap at Yankee Stadium are now homers at USCF 372 foot gap. Its a balancing act. Assuming they didn't get a wind-boost in the last place.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Feb 14, 2010 -> 04:19 PM) Retiring #23 for Ventura is something I'd be perfectly fine with. In this city, you don't retire #23 for anything less than a legend.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Feb 14, 2010 -> 03:55 PM) Strasburg had a 4.26 ERA in the AFL. What happens if you take out the game where Morel and D2: the Mighty Danks ripped him up?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 14, 2010 -> 03:13 PM) He obviously wasn't nearly as advanced as some assumed. He has ability. I think its all going to come down to how badly he wants to be a good player. The issue we're having is...a lot of people are holding it against him that he wasn't immediately as advanced as some people had assumed, and ignoring what he actually is.

Verducci with an article loaded with cool anecdotes.

Yes, I want him in Minnesota, because I don't want baseball to be the type of sport where a team like Minny can't keep a guy like him.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Feb 14, 2010 -> 02:17 PM) Unless Porcello drastically improves his peripherals the Tigers are going to be in for an unpleasant surprise this year. Given the age at which he started, it's entirely plausible to expect that he will. His peripherals also improved markedly in the 2nd half of last year; WHIP dropped from 1.45 to 1.2, K/BB went from 1.5 to 2.

It's somewhat surprising how many things it seems like people are forgetting. They've forgotten how important Jackson was for Detroit last year. They've forgotten how reliably awesome Peavy was prior to a brief injury last year. They've forgotten how important the back end of a rotation can be.

Scherzer sliding into the rotation makes them stronger but losing Jackson doesn't make them weaker?

The NY Times picked up on the Goldman/Greece link I posted on earlier this week.

QUOTE (beck72 @ Feb 13, 2010 -> 08:40 PM) The Cell has a reputation to being more kind to HR hitters over the years. Comerica Park--not so much. Some of his doubles to RF would turn into Hr's, like the improvement many are expecting from Teahen. Do you mean he'd gain HR's going from Yankee Stadium to the Cell? I don't buy that, if I'm reading this right. ANd his groveling back to the Yanks? I think that's because no one offered him anything close to the $ that they offered originally when he turned them down outright.

QUOTE (joeynach @ Feb 13, 2010 -> 06:32 PM) He hit 24HR last year...Id say power is a big part of his game and the cell would be the place to go. The Cell though would likely be a downgrade from that launching pad that is RF in the Yankee Stadium. It might even be a downgrade from RF in the old Yankee Stadium.

The IMF has published an interesting paper analyzing the financial crisis we've seen. One noteworthy argument is...it was never really believed that hitting the zero bound in interest rates was a legitimate threat, but now we've reached the point where it's not only been hit, ideally we ought to be at -8% or so to dig ourselves out of the ditch we've dug. One way to prevent doing this in the future would be to start with a higher inflation target; if your inflation target is up at 4% instead of 2%, then you've potentially got more breathing room before you hit the zero bound and stimulative fiscal policy is required.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Feb 13, 2010 -> 05:06 PM) This is one thing that I don't understand. Why don't we develop this? Is it because the airline industry and auto industry will get pissed off? That could certainly be part of it. But one other part is that no private sector entity is ever going to put up the funding for this type of project (the Chinese have put up something on the order of several hundred billion dollars in stimulus funding to build up their system). For the U.S. it'd be the same level of funding, but on top of that, we're already several trillion dollars behind on paying our infrastructure construction bills on the stuff we've already had. And as you've told me repeatedly, tax cuts are more useful than infrastructure construction. And deficits are always bad. Oh, and building a line linking Vegas and L.A. is evil and sinful and can never be done. It's also worth noting that our government just doesn't think in terms of how to develop rails. They think "people are living here, so we need to mandate a certain amount of parking", and that thinking actually reduces the ability of mass transit to be profitable, as you really need to maintain a certain level of population density around these type of centers for them to be anything better than our current Metra-type systems. As long as we're so heavily subsidizing highway construction, compared to rails, economically it makes sense to own a car in most metropolitan systems. When you think of the decision makers in the country, the politicians, the media...how many of them genuinely take public transit? The million people in L.A. who take the bus system every day, there are very few politicians among them; the politicians can afford cars. The people writing on the op-ed page of the Washington post don't take the train in after they leave the Bush administration. The guys appearing on CNN every night probably aren't taking the subway in. Aside from Biden, there's very few decision-makers who even think along the lines of what it would take to develop a rail system that would actually be useable. Its real easy to make government policies that wind up favoring the automobile and strongly disadvantaging mass transit without even meaning to do so, and so if your political class is adapted to the automobile and mass transit is left to the lower classes, your mass transit system winds up having to find a way to work itself in without interfering with the automobile, and in a lot of cases that's just not possible.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Feb 13, 2010 -> 03:43 PM) Rose will not defend his Skills challenge title. Just got a text from the Bulls saying it. Not terribly surprising. He'll re-win it next year.

The world's number 1 export commodity is starting to do serious damage to the world's number 2 export commodity.

In 2 years, the Chinese will be operating 42 separate high-speed rail lines, connecting virtually all of their major urban centers. In 4 years, the U.S. may have a high speed rail line running from Tampa to Orlando. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 12, 2010 -> 06:20 PM) Why? Lockheed thanking a guy who brought them a ton of money bothers me a lot.