NorthSideSox72

QUOTE (MAX @ Dec 1, 2011 -> 02:13 PM) That's why its not that big of a story I suppose. However, because lawmakers did not have all of the information about the true magnitude of the bailout, they made decisions based on what they knew that are likely far different from what they would have done. The banks on the other hand, are obligated to share this information with their shareholders. And they won't be punished because they are so fragile. It is still absolutely a big story. The fact that the Fed can even do something this big without approval is scary as hell. And here is a really simple question... where does this money come from? I mean, when they need a quick injection of a few billion, they can do things like bond sales and repos, or cash swaps... but $7.77T? You can't squeeze that much out of the market that quickly, it just isn't possible. Which means what they really did was raid the Fed balance sheet. And what that further means is, there is a LOT more currency in circulation than people think. Or at least there was. Even if it all came back and zeroed out the balance sheet for that loan, the money was still "created", before it was destroyed. The fact alone that the Fed could even do that should, and likely will, have a significant negative effect on the value of the US Dollar.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 1, 2011 -> 01:27 PM) Holy crap. Forget about TARP trying to hide something (which was a red herring anyway)... How the f*** did the public not know about this $7 TRILLION dollar loan program until now? Did I miss something? And another thing... I am not seeing this reported anywhere else in the major outlets yet. How did Slate manage to break this?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 1, 2011 -> 12:52 PM) http://www.slate.com/articles/business/mon...ut_scheme_.html Holy crap. Forget about TARP trying to hide something (which was a red herring anyway)... How the f*** did the public not know about this $7 TRILLION dollar loan program until now? Did I miss something?

QUOTE (ewokpelts @ Dec 1, 2011 -> 12:52 PM) 2011 Full Season ticket package price vs. 2012 Full Season ticket package price. Level 2011 Price 2012 Price Premium Club Box 3682 3682 (0%) Club Box 3439 3439 (0%) Prem. Lower Box 3682 3682 (0%) Lower Box 3034 2918 (3%) Lower Reserve 2710 2432 (10%) Bleachers 2548 2270 (11%) Prem. Upper Box 1900 1865 (2%) Upper Box 1738 1460 (16%) Upper Reserve 1414 974 (31%) Parking remains the same. $1458 for 81 games. $18 per game. I give up on trying to show you the math - one of your numbers has to be wrong. And Milkman is going to hurt me. That said... Looks like Upper Reserve won the lotto for 2012 in terms of actual decrease in ST - everyone else had small, or no, decreases (I added the % for you). Glad you are happy. Enjoy your cheaper tickets! -----So, to re-route the thread a bit... Here is something others might care about though, as I ran across this doing the math - how much are the Sox really losing here, in terms of STH revenue? Might give a clue as to payroll... Assuming the number of STH in each section is roughly the same, the total % drop in season ticket revenue will be 5.9%. However, what is not counted in the list above is the really big moneymakers - suites, united scout seats, Jim Beam club. Those prices, according to the Sox, are staying the same. Furthermore, there are higher % of STH in the pricier sections listed above, than the other ones. So in reality, the actual drop in revenue per STH is probably more like 2 to 3%, max. The wildcard is, will the lower prices mean being able to keep the total number of STH stable? Hard to tell that.

QUOTE (ewokpelts @ Dec 1, 2011 -> 12:45 PM) The sox flyer from last season had a savings of $268 from posted individual game prices(not factoring dynamic pricing or discount codes). So the box office price(assuming you got the same price level for every game with no discount or dynamic price) of the UDR was $1682. With an average price of $20.76 a game. The UDR full season plan in 2011's per game average was $17.45. A savings of over 3 dollars per game. Yes, i know this is an average, and that the premier and cubs games skew it a bit. But the 2012 per game average is $8 LESS than the 2011 box office price. And $5 less than the 2011 STH price. These are signifigant discounts. I feel like we've derailed this thread, but I have to point out your math is impossible. If your 2011 tickets were $1414, and are now $974... and according to the flyer, which I also have, the $974 represents a 32% savings over 2011 individual tickets, again. right from the flyer... then that has to mean the total cost of your plan's individual tickets in 2011 was $1429 - only $15 more than the $1414 you paid. Do the math. One of your numbers, or one of the numbers the Sox published, has to be wrong. Anyway, base point remains, the Sox are very carefully and subtly trying to give the impression that people's tickets are going to 17 to 32%. And that is simple not the case. But I am also perfectly happy with my 2% decrease.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Dec 1, 2011 -> 11:05 AM) People love to play devil's advocate. And Tex is the master of the slippery slope argument.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Dec 1, 2011 -> 10:48 AM) They should just create an overlay of the amount of districts with equal size, then add and subtract to keep whole towns together and that be the extent of the rigging. The people elected are supposed to represent everyone in the district, so the idea that you need to create a district just for latinos or blacks is frankly just racist. I agree. However, before the mandated court redistricting, the opposite problem - also racist - was the issue. The district maps intentionally corraled the Hispanic population into very few districts, and those districts were gerrymandered just as badly. So don't go thinking this was a perfectly fine map the GOP employed, and then the evil courts corrected them. The courts' map is probably more fair and closer to regional reality. But I agree with your general premise that you could, if you wanted to, do districts via a simple population heat map, and slice off regions, by way of city/county boundaries only. Wouldn't be that hard to accomplish.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Dec 1, 2011 -> 09:10 AM) The worst case scenario for Danks is to hold onto him and then lose him to FA after 2012. I really don't think that will happen, but stranger things have happened. I hope he is either traded for a decent haul now or is signed to a reasonable extention. By reasonable, I wouldn't want to see the Sox spend more than $13-$14 million per on him...essentially what they might pay for Buehrle. If the Sox are truly leaning towards a re-tooling year in 2012, I wouldn't expect Danks or Buehrle back. An extension for Danks would probably cost $15M per or higher, and for 5 years or more. I am not sure I'd want the Sox to pay him that much for that long. I agree on the last sentence though, if Danks and Buehrle are both gone, that probably means a serious rebuild.

QUOTE (ewokpelts @ Dec 1, 2011 -> 09:06 AM) I still have my 2011 STH price list, and a full season plan for the upper reserve was $1414 in 2011. The 2012 cost is $974, a savings of $440 at the SEASON TICKET LEVEL. This is not factoring the single game prices. The STH per game price in upper reserve in 2011 over 17 on average. The 2012 price averages to over $12 a game. That's almost a 1/3 off at, again, the STH price. Of course, the Upper Reserve seats are harder to sell for most games, so that discount should be steeper. But perhaps the sox math isnt as fuzzy as you wish for it to be. They're lowering prices, yet people still find ways to b**** about it! That's definitely interesting about the Upper Reserve prices. Of course, it also means that your discount in 2011 over individual tickets was a whopping $15 total, which is 1%. So your season ticket package last year only saved you 1% over buying all the tickets individually. Are you sure that's right? If so, that's bizarre, because our UD Premium Box tickets were at a 21% discount over individual ticket prices. So I'd agree that, if your $1414 figure is right, they must have realized their error and corrected it. Who is going to buy Upper Reserve season tickets, whcih are hard to sell, if they are only 1% cheaper than buying the games individually? The UD Premium Boxes went down only 2%, and the LD prices, as people have stated, went down a little or not at all. So it looks like the Upper Reserve is the place where it got severly discounted, and nowhere else. Also to be clear, I am not b****ing about the prices going down. I'm quite happy they went down 2%, I was figuring they would stay the same. I am just pointing out the fuzzy math they use - which, again, is right there in the article and in the season ticket flyer - makes it seem like every section is going down 17 to 32%. Which is not the case.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 09:26 PM) Iowa State, you're a f***ing embarrassment. Seriously, losing to this UNI team, at home, by 8? How do they beat Providence and Rice handily on the road, and lose to UNI at home? And to Drake? I've seen some clips of some games on the Cyclones site. Looks to me like they have no game control on offense. I think you nailed it earlier Heads, they need a real PG, bad.

I guess you could say the Cubs have found their savior.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 05:08 PM) $174k per year, office and staff allowance. They pay 6.2% into social security and 1.3% into the Civil Service Retirement & Disability fund and are then eligible for a defined benefit of up to 80% of their salary. Nice perk, well worth the 7.5% Office staff allowances from $700k on up to $1.6 million (in 2003, I am sure it is more now), office expense allowances of $180k a year (again, 2003) and a generous postage allowance. Yup, hard to make a living as a congressman. I agree, that is more than enough to make a nice living. And I am OK with that being the case too. It gives them zero room to say that reforming campaign and congressional finance is somehow going to take away their living.

QUOTE (VictoryMC98 @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 04:14 PM) And Where does teh SEC,CFTC..etc get the power from those rules? 2008 Finance meltdown... From everything I have read, there wasn't enough man power to actually keep up with everything that was going on from 1999-2007 Without technological overhaul, there is not enough front line manpower. If you consolidate agencies to remove some management redundancy, and add more technology to monitor and analyze more efficiently, suddenly you have more than enough front line manpower.

QUOTE (VictoryMC98 @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 03:17 PM) IMO Dodd-Frank is extremely weak, and I think you already know what I believe we should go back to. I recall watching “The Daily Show” only 30+ some odd rules out of the 200+ were implemented a year after the bill became law. I agree that we should utilize current or within the last 3 years technology, to help replace man hours. But, as we have seen with the 2008 issues, not having enough man power ends up costing us more in the long run. But from reading up on 08 issues, the government doesn’t spend the necessary money on technology, unless there is a gun pointed at their head, and still they try to get out of spending money. IMO the only way we fix this, is nothing to do with this at all... Campaign Finance Reform, we fix that.. all other issues in DC will get solved. Dodd-Frank is weak in some places, but mostly it is too vague and in some cases outright incorrect in its assumptions. But what you fail to understand on this, which both SS2K5 and I have alluded to, is that the rules are not in the law - the rules are structured by the SEC, CFTC, etc. And those agencies have been very slow in making the rules solid, and even when they have, the rules are weak or impractical. 2008? What are you referring to, where more manpower was needed? And fixing campaign finance is great and all, but has next to nothing to do with this.

QUOTE (ewokpelts @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 03:39 PM) well, according to this press release ( http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/news/artic...ws&c_id=cws ), the sox have indeed slashed full season ticket costs as high as 31%. are you calling brooks a liar? If you read that article more carefully, you will see exactly what I am talking about. Tickets have NOT been slashed as high as 31%. Discounts from 2011 INDIVIDUAL GAME TICKETS when PART OF SEASON TICKET PLANS are discounted as much as 31% - but they were already discounted close to that much to begin with, and are every year - that is part of the appeal of a season ticket plan. Read the words in the article you linked carefuly, and you will see this is the case.

Jeez, markets are up 4 to 4.5% now on the day. Haven't seen a day like this in a long time. It was quite an amazing confluence of positive news today: central bank action to increase liquidity, suprisingly high ADP jobs number, surprisingly high home sales numbers... good day to be long equities across the board.

QUOTE (VictoryMC98 @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 03:00 PM) We just have to agree to disagree; I agree more with NSS that it needs to be tweaked. But, you seem to think that because people break a law, lets get rid of the law because it cost money to enforce. My guess SOX was an overreaction to loopholes in the Fraud law. And the public outcry to the Enron scandal. By your logic, as with the my over simplification of Murder example, we could get rid of every single law known to man, to save on costs. Well to be clear, since I was invoked here... I think Dodd-Frank was a terrible implementation of what could have been good law. Same with SOX. So yes, the laws need tweaking. But I have previously agreed with SS2K5 on the fact that monitoring and enforcement are major problems, that are not at all fixed (and in fact are probably made worse) by simply making more specific things illegal. You need to consolidate all market regulation into a single agency, and you need to make much more use of technology to reduce the need for so much personnel and paperwork overhead (for both the government and the industry).

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 11:31 AM) Mark Johnson?! Kotsay!

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 10:32 AM) I'm willing to let him walk now, simply so I don't have to see the nicknames M-56 or Mark! again. I don't really get the Mark! thing, never did. But M56 is nice, and a lot easier to type than Buehrle.

QUOTE (thedoctor @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 10:30 AM) i'm glad i can provide amusement. here: it's my strong opinion that this is a rebuild. hiring a manager with no previous mlb coaching experience, cutting ticket prices, and letting it be known that your best guys are available would seem to be fairly obvious factors indicating this is the case. better? Better than saying people who aren't 100% are in denial, yeah. Anyway, first off, I would contend that having an inexperienced manager is maybe not a sign of rebuilding. If I wanted to rebuild, I'd want someone around who knew how to manage young players. But I do agree to an extent on the other two factors. Season tickets are going down very slightly (a couple %), which is a nod to the poor performance and bad economy, but also could signal a need to cut salary numbers. And I am sure KW is listening to all sorts of offers, so there is no doubt that a full-on rebuild may indeed occur. But I think he hasn't decided, and he won't until he thinks he can't wait anymore on the decision on Buehrle.

QUOTE (thedoctor @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 10:08 AM) not surprising. this is a rebuild whether or not anyone wants to admit it. These sorts of posts amuse me. There is no "this" yet, so how can you possibly say what it is? Maybe it SHOULD be one, but I love how everyone is already deciding that the future is so predictable. Especially with Kenny in charge.

QUOTE (VictoryMC98 @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 10:13 AM) Great we get rid of SOX, what law do you create that stops the fraud? And how do you make sure it doesn't happen again? And there are more important waste that we need to clean up, prior to this. Here is where you will get a different answer from SS2K5 than me. Pretty sure SS wants to see SOX pretty much just gone, and have public reporting requirements simple follow GAAP where it applies, and fly by wire from there. I personally think SOX was the right idea, but implemented badly - which is what we are beginning to see with Dodd-Frank too. The problem is, Congress doesn't understand the mechanisms of what they are trying to fix. I think SOX should be replaced or reworked, by something put together by national accounting association type people, working in conjunction with fin reg agencies, to draft practical rules - THEN it goes to Congress to get voted on. Not the other way around.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 09:53 AM) There were banks and firms who did not want the money, who were forced to take it, as to hide the firms that were in the biggest trouble. That was a central tenet of the TARP strategy. OK, so you are saying that TARP was really there to secure one or a few banks, more than anything else... no news there. And everyone knows who they were in any case, so I am not sure where you are getting this. Plus, again, the Central Bank action on swap basis changes is not anything like the same as a straight cash money bailout. If a major global bank was about to go under, and they wanted to bail it out, they would need to do a LOT more than this to make that happen. The conspiracy theory on this is silly.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 09:47 AM) I'll grant you that gingrich is smarter than perry. I guess I don't understand why you are bringing that up, though. Is it supposed to make gingrich less bad because he would be more effective at implementing his terrible policies? It makes him less bad for two reasons. One, he understands what he actually can accomplish, and focuses on those things, instead of beating his head against a wall. Second, all else equal, I'd always prefer the smarter guy to the dumber one, which should be pretty obvious.

QUOTE (VictoryMC98 @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 08:56 AM) I have not heard of them.. I do a little research in the coming days.. and get back to you. Just a quick Google on MF global, they are a derivatives broker.. enough said. Derivatives make no logical sense to me, and what I mean by that is Derivatives (which are bets for or against something) make up more money than the whole global economy is worth. The idea that after 2008, we allow these to be unregulated is just mind-blowing. And from Wiki, it states they found loopholes around SOX... Simple close the loopholes. It might be hard for people to agree with your sentiments (no matter where you stand) on things like Dodd-Frank or SOX or other Fin Reg, when it is clear you have no understanding whatsoever of financial markets. If you haven't heard of Refco or MF Global or Bear Stearns or Baring, you may want to do some homework before taking a stand on what derivatives are, what they mean, and how they should be refulated.