NorthSideSox72

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 15, 2010 -> 08:20 AM) Because obviously you have to be totally evil and greedy to make it in the financial sector. Its great to know that stereotypes can still fly with ease. The greedy part I can sort of get, and wouldn't even protest much - though the same applies to most business fields. Evil? Please. Nevermind that most people at most of firms in the financial sector are by nature conservative and very, very careful about accounting. If they weren't, they'd all have a shelf life of about 5 to 10 years. I'm pretty sure most of these guys have been around longer than that.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 15, 2010 -> 08:14 AM) Then you'd never make it on Wall Street. So many possible responses here. I'll go with... mmmmmkay.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 15, 2010 -> 08:13 AM) I've stated it in other threads but I'll repeat it here again...the numbers for the Twins pitching staff last year argue against this. Most teams on average pitch quite a bit better at home than on the road, between knowing the stadium, mound, and being in their own beds, etc. Last year, this simply wasn't true for the Twins starters. They were some of the worst in the league at home and some of the best in the league on the road. The Twins starters really struggled at home. I'm of the opinion that the Transition period you refer to for the Twinkies, esp. for their pitching staff, is going to be very short, and compared to last year, moving out of the dome is likely to help their starters. If you look over multiple years, that's not true. Also, think of it this way. Even if the transition period and learning curve are only steep the first couple months - that's around the time the ball will start flying out of that stadium. It will be hot, and those porches look pretty short to me. That helps their power hitters (M&M, Thome), but hurts their pitching. Besides, even if it only takes them a couple months to really adjust, and they then regain the home field advantage... that's still a couple months of struggles, for a team that at-best is a marginal favorite to win the division.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 15, 2010 -> 08:08 AM) Depends on how profitable they appear to be (see: AIGFP). For some companies, that's true - at their own peril. Other companies have more conservative approaches, where they assume nothing, and check everything. I prefer to be in the latter category myself.

It should be obvious that it will have some effect - the Dome was such a unique playing field, this has to be a big change. They've made some personnel changes that will help them, but that won't remove the transition period, where they will be as new to it as the other teams. They'll figure it out, but I think 2010 will be less successful than it otherwise would be for the Twins, in terms of defense and pitching. That means fewer wins.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 15, 2010 -> 08:02 AM) 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. The way to address this sort of thing, is to get away from negative control accounting at the EU level, and give them more affirmative power. In other words, don't just have the EU ask for certain books containing certain finances - which encourages this sort of B.S. to go on. You instead give EU the power to look at each country's FULL books, to look for problems. That would have allowed the EU to actually see what went on here, if they did a decent job of their audits (which is of course not 100% sure to be the case). Think of it this way - the EU is like a holding company with multiple, independently-run business units. If you are an executive at the parent company, which would you rather have reviewed: a "selection" of the books that each unit chooses to send you, or the ability to review the full financial picture? Seems pretty obvious to me.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 14, 2010 -> 09:16 PM) Simon Johnson thinks GS is in deep S***. 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.

OK, people asked for pictures. I brought up the semi-obscure Radha Mitchell. She really isn't my "type", but there was something about her in the movie Pitch Black - something that pictures don't capture - that made me crush on her something fierce. here are a few pics...

QUOTE (shakes @ Feb 12, 2010 -> 02:53 PM) The Sox defense,baserunning, and bench were amongst the worst in baseball. They have completely reconfigured the offense, defense, bench, and added to the bullpen. A lot has been done. Baseball is much more than an offensive sport. You can see how the station-to-station slugging mentality has gone the last few years. Yes, they could use another bat, but I think they have improved just about every other area of the team. And changes to those areas were long overdue. I don't see any gaping holes like past teams, and if being one bat short is the problem, regardless of position that bat plays, they are not in bad shape. I'm willing to see how this plays out, and what the final roster looks like come opening day. Kenny is clearly still working to get another bat. I think you are making T-Bolt's point in this case. He is concerned about the one hole we CLEARLY have, at DH, and that needs to be addressed. I agree with you that KW has improved this team quite a big since mid-last season, but the one place we fell back, is a big fall.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Feb 12, 2010 -> 02:40 PM) I think that's a huge factor here too. Boras knows how to play Heyman, and is very close to the Tigers management. That same thing could be said of the Tigers' supposed offer. There's bulls*** there somewhere, but let's be honest - no one knows where it lies in this case. All we can say with some amount of certainty is that the Tigers and Sox are potentially interested, and one of them will probably sign him.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Feb 12, 2010 -> 10:27 AM) As long as he's not hurt, should be closer to 600 than 400. If we do sign him, he right away becomes one of our best hitters and if Jones needs a day in the lineup then Pierre should be the one doing the sitting, not Damon. Yeah, when I said 400+, I was thinking more ideally like 500. 400 at DH, and then spending some time on the corners for the other 100. The other 200 DH at bats can go to Jones.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Feb 12, 2010 -> 10:06 AM) I don't think some people realize how much having a legitimate, mid 800's OPS type left handed bat at DH who can also play LF at times like Johnny Damon will upgrade this team over rotating 4 guys who cannot hit at the DH spot. I really think a move like this fits into the idea that we'll overspend a bit for one more guy if we feel it makes us a lot better. I like the idea of rotating Damon and Jones at DH, and giving Damon further at bats by playing in the OF. I still think Jones will have a good year. But if you sign Damon, you should try to get him 400+ at bats, most at DH.

QUOTE (The Critic @ Feb 11, 2010 -> 07:19 PM) Thank you, Frank, for being the premier "stop and watch" player in all of baseball in the early 90's. Thank you, Frank, for the boost you provided to the Sox in the middle of 2005. Thank you, Frank, for being so vocal against PED's when no one else was. Enjoy your induction into the Hall Of Fame! Good Ol' #35 I was going to type out a post for this, but you pretty much said it perfectly. +1, and hopefully a first ballot entry.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Feb 11, 2010 -> 04:34 PM) Not gonna happen, bud. Sorry. The reports of the Sox bidding has been greatly overstated. Well, the idea of them WINNING maybe. But its entirely possible they bid.

QUOTE (SoxFan562004 @ Feb 11, 2010 -> 04:23 PM) It's a Boras client, I take every media report with a grain of salt. I could easily see him wanting to get more $$ out of the Tigers so he leaks the White Sox as interested. I would really like if Damon was on the White Sox, I think it would make perfect sense and make the team better, however I just don't see it happening with the 2/14 deal being reported, I don't see the Sox beating that. Of course, the 2/14 number might not be right either.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 11, 2010 -> 03:58 PM) What question did you think we were discussing? The specific claim I was challenging was pretty simple; the government is guaranteed to take a big loss on the GM bailout because GM's market cap has never been high enough to make up the difference. I think he was originally pointing out that you are using an inflation adjustment for market cap, but not using one for the natural increases in fixed and employee costs.

I've updated the subtitle of this thread to reflect the latest news.

Just copying and pasting what Kyyle put in the Free Agent thread... Interesting turn in ESPN.com 's new article

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/M/orber-moreno.shtml

QUOTE (Nyx81 @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 09:07 PM) I'm confused (not hard) but I thought the quake early this morning was near DeKalb, more in the western suburbs. Were there two quakes? USGS revised their epicenter after further analysis. Original one was 5 miles east of Sycamore, around the small town of Virgil. They are now saying the epicenter is just behind a farm house at the intersection of Plank and Mulihead roads, in the Plato Center area. Interestingly, the Trib interviewed the people who live there, and the other ones across the street. One of them said they could have sworn they felt something similar a couple nights earlier as well.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 06:26 PM) http://www.thenewestdeal.org/2010/02/iranian-hulk.html The one on the left looks like a young Sly Stallone. So, what do Rocky, Obama and The Incredible Hulk have in common?

Just saw one on TV last night I forgot about, kind of obscure - Radha Mitchell.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 04:17 PM) Out of curiosity, is this fault connected to the New Madrid system at all? Where is the best place to find stuff like that out? The articles I saw today said it wasn't - its hundreds of miles away from the New Madrid zone.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 01:24 PM) I think the democrats would support offshore drilling if the Republicans would get on board with serious, non half-assed alternative energy investment. The official Republican answer to energy seems to be "drill in ANWR and we'll have oil for centuries and be completely energy-independent at no cost to the environment" Unfortunately, this is correct, from what we have seen. The Dems, in all their disorganized glory, have made multiple overtures about nuke power and drilling - and the GOP doesn't seem interested in reciprocating. JIMB was right about both parties being all about power and not governing, though.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Feb 9, 2010 -> 04:20 PM) I don't really know why Roark would be considered morally ambiguous. He was guided by a certain set of principles. Right or wrong did matter very much to Howard Roark, just not the traditional right or wrong, I don't think that makes him morally ambiguous. Are we calling morally ambiguous, characters that are hung over the razor's edge of conventional right and wrong? That's kind of what I thought. It seems like the definition you have, is more like a sociopath - someone who just doesn't care about morality. Or am I misunderstanding?