Balta1701

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 07:45 PM) For once, I think ESPN got something right. Pretty sure I agree too.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 06:07 PM) Getz has all 3 options remaining, Owens is out. So if we make our team out of guys who are out of options or who have to pass through waivers, it becomes Owens, Betemit, Lillibridge, Kroeger, Nix, and then an open spot if you count starting 2b and CF? Does Lilli have an option left? Who am I missing? Edit, was missing Wise. So unless Lillibridge has an option left, we're talking Owens, Wise, Betemit, Lillibridge, Kroeger, Nix, with a backup catcher somewhere presumably.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 05:36 PM) You probably know that answer just as well as anyone else. It sorts itself out eventually besides BA is expendable right ? If someone beats out Anderson, I have no problem with him going to AAA (what always annoys me with his case is that it's never actual performance that relates to whether or not he plays, but all the other grindy things). But guyz like Owens and Getz are out of options IIRC, right?

Tom Geoghegan, who's running for Rahm Emmanuel's old Congressional seat, has filed a lawsuit in Illinois court to force the state to hold a special election. His legal reasoning is at least interesting.

So what happens if we have more non-roster invitees play well enough to earn spots than we have spots?

QUOTE (joesaiditstrue @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 05:10 PM) And he said...? Play the best song in the world or I'll eat your souls.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 03:52 PM) You get your hands on a case like Nashiri, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah etc. that's like an automatic judgeship. The problem is you have to figure out what to do with the ones who've had their testicles repeatedly sliced with a scalpel.

Federal prosecutors have charged a former enemy combatant, one of the guys too evil to be charged with anything who had to be held forever without a fair trail, with supporting Al Qaeda.

Link.

Oh, and this is still Schumer's fault. If only he'd kept his mouth shut, all the banks would be in fine shape.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 02:52 PM) i suppose that's true. just like G W Bush is "the best president ever". i would strongly disagree, yet his supporters would say my analysis is subjective and incorrect. I will certainly grant you he's been a failure so far on the "Posting legislation online for public review" issue.

FWIW, on the price issue, for X-Mas, I managed to pull off through a couple black friday deals 2 pairs of new ones, one Sony one Phillips, for a total of $5, to replace the original ones my Ipod came with that had died. I can't notice any decline in the sound quality, although I've never had the opportunity to try more expensive ones.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 02:24 PM) truth is, Obama is on path to absolutely destroying all deficit spending records. G W Bush looks like a fiscal conservative compared to Obama and that is a scary thing. You know why he looks like that? Because he's being slightly more honest with his bookkeeping.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 05:58 AM) Good god, step away from your talking points for a second and try to understand the big picture here. Dispite the contention that because of this one little fact that you keep bringing up being true, that doesn't change that having a lender of last resort made a market for this crap. Even if the US government didnt' buy VASTLTY MOST OF THE GSE's, they made them profitable by buying a portion of them, and setting up a defacto marketplace for them. When something becomes profitable it is economic law that it creates a stream of people who will attempt to enter that sector until the profitablility of said marketplace approaches zero. With the huge profits available in this sector because of both the money, plus the acceleration of housing prices, there was no "risk" in the marketplace. If you didn't sell your risk off, and the buyer failed in its obligation, they could sell in foreclosure for a higher price anyway. The profited in either manner. Not only was the government responsible for guarenteeing a portion of this market, but they were also directly responsible for the beginning of the accleration of home prices, because they created a new level of demand that had never been there before by putting people into homebuying situations that had never been there before. Its the same things that the government has done to make health care and education so damned expensive. Its pure demand economics. When you enable more people to buy, the price goes up, if all other things stay the same. The effect is even greater in areas where supply is fixed, such as, I don't know, education and health care? If you don't believe me, stop and ask yourself this question. How come there wasn't a sub-prime mortgage sector until after all of these laws were pased? Why haven't banks been doing this for decades, or even centuries? You know, lately, I feel like I've been doing my best thinking at the gym. Yesterday, I was able to come up with 3 different ways to set off a volcano in the middle of Louisiana for a cost of less than 2 Iraq wars, today I was able to think through a response to you. What you're not realizing with your post is that your fundamental economic principle is actually exposing the single key flaw in the current wall street setup that leads to this. Your argument is that if the federal government does anything of any sort that it feels provides a public good, like say, increasing home ownership amongst disadvantaged communities, and in specific market conditions this program actually produces a profit, then Wall Street will see this profit, conclude that those market conditions will prevail forever and that infinite profits can therefore be accrued by doing the exact same thing and then leveraging 1000 to 1 bets on it. My first response to this argument is...ok, then what we need is the government to produce a small profit running high speed trains. In response, Wall Street will see this profit, conclude an unlimited amount of money can be made on high speed trains, and then before that bubble bursts we'll have the world's best high speed rail system. Or hell, even cooler, what we need is to turn a profit on volcano monitoring. Suddenly Wall Street sees profitability in volcano monitoring, money pours in, and before you know it, I'm taking my 10 figure bonus and buying beachfront property in Orlando (which will still be above water once the Greenland ice sheet goes). Switching away from the sarcasm, what you're failing to realize is that you've illuminated the exact flaw in the current Wall Street setup that allowed this to happen, and you've illuminated exactly why we need a fundamental reform of the system. There's nothing on principle wrong with the government providing assisted homeownership to disadvantaged groups. Homeownership provides a strong benefit to society. It makes people's lives more stable, stimulates the economy, reduces crime rates. Even if it takes a loss on some portion of the loans, there is a clear benefit to society of having the government work to extend home ownership to disadvantaged communities. Similarly, there is nothing on principle wrong with even somewhat crazy mortgages. Low rate ARM's and such can make sense for people in certain economic conditions. For example, if I get a 2 year postdoc somewhere, and I expect the housing market to stay somewhat flat, then buying a place on a discounted rate and then selling it in 2 years can allow me to build up significant equity rather than paying the money as rent to someone else, and the bank is happy because they make a profit off the interest I do pay. There is nothing a priori wrong with either of these types of loans. The problem is the insanity that you say always must follow. In this case, and in the case of each and every one of these bubbles we've seen, exactly what you state from theory has happened...money has come in until there is no more profit to be had. But here's the flaw...when the bubbles burst, every time, we find out that VASTLY more money has poured in than what should have happened based on the theory you describe. Every time Wall Street finds something new that is turning a profit, the incentives have gotten so out of line in favor of short term gains with no concern about long term market conditions or risk that a nearly infinite amount of money pours in, Wall Street makes hugely leveraged bets against those small profits, comes up with crazy theories no one but a handful of bankers believes about how the market can never and will never go down (Dow 40,000!), and then watches it all blow up in their faces when it turns out that a small amount of money producing a small profit does not in fact lead you to believe that an infinite amount of money invested the same way will produce an infinite amount of profit. Based on this argument, therefore, either 1 of these 2 things must be true. 1. Capitalism as a system does not work, because every new invention, every new service or product that is created will give rise to a bubble taking all of the profit out of that product and then will wind up destroying vastly more wealth than was created by the invention of the new product or service. Therefore, capitalism will eventually spiral you down a set of bubbles until all wealth is destroyed. 2. The problem isn't with the existence with the loans, or with capitalism itself, the problem has absolutely nothing to do with the government creating them, the problem is entirely due to the focus on short term profit taking and dramatic over-leveraging that exists within our system that is allowing the creation of these asset bubbles. The corporate culture within the banking world is the villain in this case. As I'm not yet a communist, I'm going to go with option 2 until proven otherwise. The problem is not that these loans existed. They can be profitable and useful under the right circumstances and provide significant benefits to people on both sides if they're used wisely. The problem is that Wall Street came up with these crazy ideas that failed to include the most basic facts about the housing market; like the fact that the value of one home can effect the value of its neighbor, assumed that the market would therefore always go up, removed any means of balancing the risk by paying its workers entirely based on their short term profitability rather than whether or not it was making sound long-term decisions, and then rewarded the people who made the biggest shot-term gambles while punishing and firing the people who said the gambling was insane. This flaw suggests several necessary fixes. It doesn't suggest banning sub-prime loans or banning giving loans to poor people. The problem, again, is not that the loans existed, it is what was done with them. What it does suggest is: 1. The corporate culture on Wall Street is the true evil here. It is currently set up to entirely reward people who sacrifice everything for short term gain and punish people who plan for the long term. It basically rewards the person who goes to the casino, wins the first few hands, and then keeps upping the wager. This must be fixed. Corporate boards and compensation must be reformed by legislative fiat. They really are key elements to driving the formation of these bubbles. Additional advantages for long term planning as opposed to short term gains (i.e. reforming the tax code that allows losses to be deducted over such large amounts of time) could also help. 2. The thing that allows the insidious corporate culture to really destroy things is the leverage that these banks are allowed to go to. It's inexcusable that, for example, the Default Swap market could be leveraged up to $60 trillion dollars on a few hundred billion dollars of assets. Madness. A worldwide effort must be undertaken to bring the banks, and anything that wants to operate like a bank, under control, even in the good times when it seems everything is fine. 3. The Securities rating agencies need a complete overhaul. I think that's obvious...them putting garbage as AAA loans without even bothering to check on the quality of the loans was a key part in convincing investors to keep making them. As soon as we finish the Volcano Monitoring bubble, these changes would be a good start. There are probably more that need to be made that aren't coming to my head right now. The entire financial system needs a gigantic regulatory overhaul. Anything less and we're just asking for another bubble, and who knows where the bottom of that one will be.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 09:35 AM) There will be some of that. But, look at the examples in the article - they are talking about cutting entire departments. By far the biggest key is finding a way to cut the rate of growth of health care expenditures. Health care costs of every variety are growing so much faster than the rate of inflation that it's just going to destroy everything barring a major, successful overhaul.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 09:25 AM) It can be done, but it has to be done carefully and diligently. 10 years is a far more realistic timeframe than McCain's "by the end of my first term" proposal. Diligently and carefully is not going to describe the kind of impact the government is going to need to make once we get past the current troubles. We've spent years digging ourselves a double-bottomed pit that interestingly enough looks like a W in cross section, we're going to need a major move to keep the walls from collapsing on our head.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 09:12 AM) Haha, balta is turning into our very own Kap. I'm not sure I'd call that one hyperbole when it's exactly what happened the last bloody time. Would it have made it more accurate if I'd said $3 trillion in tax cuts and $4 trillion in random wars?

QUOTE (SoxFan101 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 01:16 AM) Regardless of the return your getting, especially with the kind of money he is making.... should be money that is safely set aside, when your making millions of dollars a year, is it 2 hard to put 1 million in banks? Yup. No problem with that either. Hi, Indymac, I'd like to open an account. Oh don't worry, I'm sure you guys are safe, I don't need to care about the FDIC limit...

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Feb 25, 2009 -> 08:15 PM) For Brian Anderson to hit .270, he'd have to completely change his entire swing. Or become a tape room junkie. Brian changed his entire swing last year.

QUOTE (almagest @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 09:10 AM) I'm guessing he's primarily roster filler, but with Pittsburgh's inability to develop pitching from so many high draft picks, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Sox start grabbing some of these players to see what can be fixed. I still wouldn't be surprised at all if they tried to make him in to a successful relief pitcher and we saw him in the bigs at some point this year.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 08:31 AM) If one were to make a similar statement about, for example, those who constantly bash Obama... you could then leap to say that they think the Democratic party should be abolished in favor of a 100% GOP government. It worked great from 2000-2006!

All that will happen is he will succeed, some Republican will come along, win the 2016 election, and propose $3 trillion in tax cuts.

If anyone else watches Num3ers on CBS, they're apparently shooting someone in the stairwell down the hall from me today.

Don't worry. Within about 6 months they'll be owned by the FDIC anyway.

QUOTE (daa84 @ Feb 25, 2009 -> 06:55 PM) maybe im just ultra skeptical after the whole madoff thing, but id be leary of anyone who promises double digit returns year in and year out...also its still inexcusable to not at least have enough money for living expenses in some sort of safer account...hell id imagine he at least would have some nice real estate somewhere So let's see, he's making double digit returns off of his investments with the scammer, and as of summer 2006 his nice real estate has gone up 50% in the last 5 years. What could go wrong?!