Balta1701

I would still say that DiBlasio has the second worst performance of any politician in this country this year, and with as hard as the governors of Florida and Texas have worked at killing people on purpose, and with McConnell’s senate work...it takes some serious incompetence to be on that list.

Gmab. Musgrove is a year older, has pitched 496 innings to Lopez’s 490, 4.3 rWAR for musgrove versus 3.2 for Lopez. Potential stud? I mean anyone could be but come on, that’s another Reynaldo Lopez you’re just imagining will work out with your pitching coach when the Astros and Pirates couldn’t do it.

Last points - K-12 schools have had to spend tens of billions of dollars on PPE, testing, new computer facilities, contracts with Zoom, new curriculum materials, and on and on and on. That is substantially covered by the $50 billion you note, but that money is fundamentally different from the "aid to state and local governments". THat is (insert your city here) now has a huge drop in sales tax revenue because every bar and restaurant has had their income slashed and the tourism industries, hotel taxes, revenue from parking, and so on have plummeted. That's a hole that is hundreds of billions of dollars so far, and will keep growing the longer this goes on. I understand the general concept of your prediction of an increase in spending due to the increased savings rate, but at the same time - 800,000 more people filed for unemployment this week. These numbers are enormous, meaning lots of people have been cycling in and out of jobs. Even if the vaccines were rolled out rapidly and this cleaned up, between that and the long stretch of state and local government job losses we're about to see, there's a lot of forces that are pushing the other way.

All right I'll have at you. First point - back in the beforeforetimes, I once had a debate here over the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. A pair of posters here who I will not call out by name said that adding so much money to the debt in that bailout would trigger widespread inflation and that would in the end damage the economy. I countered with several points - that the hole blown in the economy was so large that $800 billion wouldn't fill it, that even if it did fill it the Federal Reserve has plenty of power available to fight inflation if it were to occur, and that the risks of it being too small were far larger than the risks of it being too big. What happened? The ARRA stopped the bleeding of jobs in 2009, but was not big enough to dig out of the hole. Instead, it took the country nearly a decade to return to anything close to full unemployment and the feared inflation was so under control that the Federal Reserve actually can't get the inflation rate high enough. In other words, in any case like this of economic crisis, it is always better for your bailout to be too big than too small. If your bailout is too small, your country will take years, perhaps decades to return to full employment - for the US this will cost trillions of dollars in economic activity. If your bailout is too big, your economy grows rapidly, you return to full employment rapidly, and the Central Bank has to raise interest rates to slow growth - with millions more people employed and jobs getting better. Furthermore, if the Central Bank has to raise rates, it gets the rates above the limit of rates having to stay above zero - this would give the Central Bank more power to respond to the next crisis. There are limits of course - a $50 trillion bailout would produce other problems, but if the right amount is $2 trillion, you are better off being at $3 trillion than $1 trillion. Many of those I can't comment on but I'm going to focus on a few. Unemployment - the extra benefit could be larger and it could be made retroactive to August when the last bonus ended. That will put money into the hands of people who were unemployed over that time. Obviously I also oppose the means testing of the checks for reasons people have described here. I think a larger number would be nice, but the unemployment benefits are more important. I can comment readily on higher education having been in that field. In the US, Higher Education is roughly a $600 billion industry per year, and it's receiving about $20 billion, so 3.5% of its budget. With just the costs of PPP and new computing supplies alone, many schools blew well past that. Especially if the economy remains weak for the next several years where people are going to want to go to schools to develop new skills, having universities cutting programs to save money will be an issue. Some universities can borrow against endowments, but most schools do not have large ones. I think if that were twice as large, it would still fail to offset many of the costs in that industry this year. The PPP at $325 billion should be larger. THis is the 3rd installment on the PPP I believe, and each time it is drained in only a couple of months - meaning the demand is far larger than $325 billion. Some of that is of course Jared Kushner and other very big businesses needing to take his piece off the top, but that program should have been far larger. I think it's been noted above that the hospitality (restaurant and bar) industry hasn't gotten anything, even though they get some PPP that is an industry that should have received significant targeted support and it does not. Finally - aid to state and local governments. This is not in the bill because Republicans constantly oppose it, and in reality it should be a huge slice. Much of that goes to police, fire, teachers, and construction, this year's sales tax numbers will be in the toilet with so many businesses unable to open, so whether it's a small town in texas or los angeles, everyone's in trouble. Although this does effectively "Defund police" because they will get some cuts, we saw the end result of this refusal in 2010 - slow private sector job growth, but overall job growth is stalled because public sector jobs spent years being cut. This will be a drag on employment nationwide for years. I am not well calibrated on many of the other industries, but even without them I think I've basically just doubled the size of the bill.

But, if it’s a substantial minority, shrinking that amount and providing longer expanded unemployment benefits or construction projects and aid to state and local governments that support and provide jobs would be a better use of the money than giving it to me, as I won’t spend it any time soon.

for reference I have zero need for this. If I can get the vaccine this will pay for a week in Maine this summer that I would probably do anyway. Might spend some extra at a few restaurants and hit up a Yankee game with that, but save 75%.

Having taught a bunch of students who did that, it is false to say they don’t leave with debt. Id also like to think I have a pretty damn good into level class too.

For a guy who hasn't coached in nearly a decade and now thinks these youngsters have a lot to learn, that's not necessarily true.

Wrong league, but one interesting concept coming from a better commissioner than MLB has is that expansion fees could be used to manage and offset some of the 2020 losses. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/30576045/adam-silver-acknowledges-possibility-nba-expansion

We're not allowed to use that nickname. It didn't work great last time.

Am I the only one who remembers the decade where the financial industry dumped money into housing loans because simplistic computer models said housing was a perfect investment, doubled the price of the average house, then nearly imploded the economy when it turned out they weren’t worth that leading to a multi trillion dollar set of bailouts?

And how exactly could he have convinced himself of that when the rest of his front office disagreed? If Hahn and Williams both didn’t believe he was so obviously the best candidate for the job that they wanted to interview others, who could Reinsdorf have talked to that would support that idea? The only person I can think of who would tell JR that LaRussa was so clearly the best possible person for the job that no one else should be considered ever is...LaRussa. No one else on Earth would have thought that.

Having seen Bobby Valentine with the Red Sox...it is actually possible to be worse than that.

I thought I said don’t ask. Anyway, since you did, social science says you’re right, people are more likely to spend the small amounts. But there’s a couple problems. First, the effect is small, a few percent at most. But then, the other part is the politics. People don’t notice those small changes - that’s how the Trump administration was able to pass a huge middle class tax increase, it is phased in slowly over the next 4 years. In 2010 after that bill passed (and the economy had struggled for 2 years), the Republicans took back Congress, and we immediately had multiple government shutdowns and a debt ceiling and default crisis that all negatively impacted growth at a scale larger than that tiny percent difference, let alone the fact that they would not tolerate any additional stimulus.

A couple things. First I did read that far and well done. You should have asked me to include some code word in my reply. Second, it’s a little rough to compare the 2009 ARRA to this bill, because the ARRA was limited to $900 billion when it should have been twice that. The ARRA only included a couple hundred billion in shovel ready projects, roughly 1/2 of that bill was a moderate tax cut spaced out over several years and buried under some theory that people are more likely to spend an extra $10 a week than a one time $520 check (don’t ask). There were some extensions of unemployment benefits beyond the normal 26 weeks included and that is very useful, as you note, but a big part of this one is that it was actually BIG. You couldn’t possibly do the $600/week supplements and any other tax credits during 2008 because the bill had a price limit due to the necessity of getting Susan Collins on board and her belief that good policy is determined by round numbers. And 3rd, yeah that $600 a week was really useful, and it’s nice that more of that will happen. But it’s also worth noting that we have still had higher weekly unemployment filings every week since March than were seen at the peak of the Great Recession....so this next bill is, like the ARRA, not big enough.

So while I hung out in PHT and worked today, the Us agreed on funds to support a number of southeast Asian nations, declared the Dalai Lama should be able to help choose his successor without Chinese interference, and Trump declared that only certain architectural styles are acceptable for federal buildings. This is pretty nuts even to me.

Is he related to the more famous manager who shares the same last name?

Except, that statement applies to 2019, but not really 2020. In 2020, his K-rate dropped from 10.5/9 to 9.5/9, and his career average is 8.9. His K/bb in 2020 was still better than it was for most of his career, but it was not the exceptional numbers seen in 2019. In the 2020 season, his FIP and xFIP were the 2nd worst of his career. I cannot say at all that he isn't the pitcher he was in 2019, he absolutely could still be. But 2020 should leave at least some concern.

The question I'd ask in reply is...If I told you you were trading for a consistent 3 WAR pitcher, with good playoff experience, but with only 1 year of control and a $9.3 million salary this year, would you give up Dunning+ for that? I wouldn't. He may not have the playoff experience, but even coming off injury, Dunning is a guy who is under team control for 6 years with several games in the majors where he showed he can get big league pitchers out. He would have a legit shot at putting up 3 WAR this year, and Dunning + an extra $9 million to spend would very likely be preferable when you consider the extra control. He put up 0.7 in 2020 in only 8 starts as a true rookie coming off injury. This discussion started because someone said that the White Sox had paid the price for a 5-7 WAR pitcher, and I think that's fairly accurate. If you told me I was getting a 6 WAR pitcher, with 1 year of control remaining and a $9.3 million salary, I'd say "Yes Dunning+ is a sensible trade for that", you lose a lot of control but your rotation now has another all star who can match up with anyone." So one of a couple things needs to happen - either Lynn needs to be that 2019 version, or the White Sox need to win the world series so that we say "eh Lynn wasn't all that great but who cares here's a trophy."

I'd say with some confidence that this evaluation took the form of "Jerry says it's no big deal and we aren't allowed to ask about it any more, so tell someone to start writing up the press release."

Interestingly, if he had completed one, it almost certainly would have been filed with the judge to verify that he did so, which I think would put it into the public record of the case.

Well the problem is they were never going to give me the statement that would actually satisfy me, because that's not how it went down. If they put Tony LaRussa out there to apologize publicly, admit what he did wrong, apologize to the police officer, apologize to Kaepernick (For saying he wasn't sincere when LaRussa's "it'll never happen again" was a truly insincere statement), apologize to the people of Arizona, say that he had completed a treatment program, and that he was honored by the chance to redeem himself with the White Sox, take questions, and even show that he knows the names of his future players...I'd consider that a very strong start. But they can't make that statement, because neither laRussa nor the org believes he should apologize or complete a treatment program.

Notably missing from that statement is any version of "Tony LaRussa received or completed a treatment course."

It's not clear from this article, so asking - how are they dealing with the Canadian border issue? Is that Canadian division just spending the whole season up there, with no border crossing teams?

It's not even the fountain of youth - he wasn't as good in his youth as he was in 2019. He would need to have found something he never had before. He could have! But every assertion that he's a top 10 pitcher in baseball, or that he's a top half of any rotation pitcher - they all assume he has done so. Lots of big ifs here. If he's the pitcher he was in 2019, yes I would rather hand him the ball every 5th day than Dunning. If he's the pitcher he was in 2018, then very real chance Dunning looks better on an average day, and he's being paid $9.3 million for that, so I'd much rather have given the ball to Dunning and had another $9 million to spend. And of course, if Dunning continues growing as a pitcher, a very good chance we'd wish we could hand the ball to him in 2022. And if Lynn isn't the pitcher he was in 2019 there's a very good chance we'll hate any extension given to him. It all comes down to this. If Lynn is the pitcher we saw in 2019, then both the trade and any extension are pretty well justified. If not...well there you go.