southsider2k5

The really interesting thing about the article is the breakdown of his most famous rescue projects. The amazing part is that it isn't like Cooper is using a one size fits all approach to fixing these guys. In each of them he identified something completely different, and focused in on that. For some guys it was a physical change, for others it was mental. It tells me that Coop isn't looking at a Walt Hriniak type of style where it is one size fits all and this is how you should pitch. He is smart enough to be able to recognize flaws in all types of deliveries, mindsets, and approaches and is able to taylor an individual approach for each pitcher. That really goes to explain a lot of his relative success rate. It also goes to show you that someone in the Sox system is a great evaluator of pitching potential at the minor league level and above, because someone is finding these guys and getting them to Coop to review before they get here. It makes me feel even better about the guys in our system.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 04:05 PM) Again, banks must keep track of all customers. Federal Law. More specifically these are post 9-11 anti-money laundering laws. Brokerages have to do these samethings.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 04:25 PM) 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. So what you are telling me is that a system where the people in charge of making decisions put short term gain ahead of long term growth to impress the equity holders of a system into keeping them around for a long period of time so that they can take advantage of all of the perks of their jobs is a failed system. This system needs to be reformed, right? Great, so who are you going to get to reform the financial sector, because you pretty much just indicted all of Congress and the Presidency as flawed by your standards. With the pressures of being re-elected, and getting as much money as possible from lobbys, unions, and constituents, we watch Congress sacrifice intelligent growth for being able to make as many short-term gains as possible for their districts, and then go back and brag about exactly how inefficient they have been. These are the guys who are supposed to reform the broken financial sector? HA! Remember this is the same Congress that had to have financial dictionaries printed so that they could even understand the banking meltdown that they were supposed to be fixing. And now they are supposed to objectively know how to fix the problems? If you didn't know what a default credit swap was six months ago, you have no business passing laws that will influence the direction of our financial sector for generations to come. Going back to there being nothing wrong with all of the ideals behind the bills, you are right. There is nothing wrong with trying to good for people who need help. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Just because it is a noble cause, doesn't mean that it makes it immune from having unintended consequences. Every single one of these bills and items that I keep touching on were all passed for good reasons. That doesn't change the damaging effects on our economy. Many of them were huge contributing factors to this very crisis. So to fix that, we are going to pass more laws when the laws we already had passed are what screwed things up in the first place. No, I have zero confidence in the President and the Congress to fix this mess because those are the very groups that did this to us! If you give a gun to to a three year old, you can't blame the gunmaker, nor the kid for what they do with it. You blame the idiot who gave them the gun in the first place. Going back to your sarcasm, the irony is that it is 100% true. It is the entire reason that the whole alternative energy and transportation things haven't gotten off of the ground. There is no money in them. When did you see the big push towards alternative energy? When the prices of regular energy got expensive and alternative energy became potentially profitable. It wasn't some noble pursuit, or some governmental speech/program that made it work. It was money and profit motivation. Its somebody looking at it and making leveraged bets that if they can make a thousand dollar profit selling one hybrid, then they can make billions if they can sell millions. And if the bubble bursts in that sector, they will go broke. Imagine that, now you hate green energy too. As for the financial sector, I have said it before and I will say it again. It is regulated about as stupidly and ineffectiently as could be possible. When you have something like 100ish regulating bodies that don't work with each other, that compete with each other, and are managed by people who don't necesarily have experience in their fields, you are begging for a disaster. Guess what, we get disasters pretty regularly in this sector, and they keep happening, dispite more and more regulations. And this isn't just happening in the US. It is happening all over the world. The EU is having problems, and they are much heavier in regulations than we are. China is having problems, and it is 100% government controled. Japan is in a freefall, and that is with all of their notions of honor and decency that are built into their business realm. All you have to do is look at your history to know that this generation of regulations, only turns into the next generation of problems. It is a truism throughout all of American economic history. Things would be better if we had a single centralized agency that wasn't at the lap of Congress. I would close the doors of every single regulating and oversight body, and give all of their budgets to the Federal Reserve. They would be responsible for the American financial sector, the way that they should be.

Happy Birthday

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 02:17 PM) Brian just scored from first on a double. Vintage Cowley

QUOTE (daa84 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 01:00 PM) i think broadway is a darkhorse to make the team as a long man in the pen this year....youd think the organization has soured on him as a starter, especially with poreda, marquez, richard on the way, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they take a guy who can eat innings for when Colon/Jose pitch...while keeping those other young guys as starters in AAA (or in the case of Richard as a lefty in the pen) Broadway might be somewhere between 8th and 10th on the starting pitching depth chart if Colon and Contreras are healthy. This is how I see things today. Broadway probably fits about the same spot, if not lower in the bullpen. MB Danks Floyd Contreras Colon Marquez Richard Poreda

QUOTE (DABearSoX @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 10:56 AM) in reality the person you were talking to probably did not know how to change it. I put up such a stink with my superiors that finally they told me about the verifiedbyvisa.com thing....of course they wouldn't tell me how to do it in the actually bank system, that knowledge was only for card services.... It was actually the branch manager. But I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't know, because she didn't know her ass from a hole in the ground anyway.

QUOTE (EvilJester99 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 01:09 PM) Didn't Christian tell Locke to find Eloise?? It was Richard I thought?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 11:44 AM) What the... yes, it did. It didn't have a LOT of details before, but it had a handful of examples at least, and allusions to other things. Weird. Yahoo does that a lot. That's why I always try to copy and paste the full article before they change it or disable the link.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 11:35 AM) There will be some of that. But, look at the examples in the article - they are talking about cutting entire departments. The link I saw was a mini article that didn't have any detail. Did it change?

QUOTE (Brian @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 11:13 AM) Last night convinced me that Ben is bad and Whidmore is good. Knowing the show, it will change 100 more times. Totally. Its hard to decide who really has the best intentions at heart. I can't wait to see Whidmore's whole story.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 11:25 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. To be fair, that plan came out long before the extent of the problems was evident. In reality, this is going to be the same accounting trick that is always used when spending is "cut" buy the government. Take budget of department A. It is projected to have a 10% increase annually from the $100 billion is is this fiscal year. Cut the rate of increase to say 3%, and call the other 7% percent a "savings" even though you are still increasing the budget of this particular department by 3%. Hopefully I am wrong, and there are some real cuts, and they actually start to cut into the duplicity of government, but history doesn't look good.

Obama's popularity rating has fallen 10 points in 4 weeks. http://www.gallup.com/poll/116077/Obama-Jo...First-Time.aspx

QUOTE (DABearSoX @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 10:40 AM) This kind of stuff happens at all banks/credit unions.... It's mostly a bunch of BS, but some of it is for security reasons and not just bank policy but government policy. I was a service rep at a place on the CU campus...So basically I got to sit people down at my desk and watch them cry/b****/complain about every charge that got put on their cards. One of my biggest peeves with that place was that the card wouldn't "shut off" when you didn't have enough money to pay for the swipe; this is a tactic that a lot of banks use. It is the "Opt out" method, basically meaning that you have to opt out of what ever agreement you signed for in the first place, the one at this place being that it would allow you to overdraft as a courtesy for not making you look dumb at a cash register. If your debit card is a VISA I believe you can go somewhere on www.verifiedbyvisa.com and make it so your card will not overdraft. Banks are allowed to change fees at anytime - you are usually notified by a mailing if you will incur any new charges for things like account types and such. Since a lot of people just throw that stuff away they are not aware of a new charge. When I was an FSR they started charging all the students a 4.00 fee every month for the "student account" they signed up for 2 years prior. All I can say is I did not enjoy working there for the next few months. So please if this happens to you don't b**** at a teller or service rep like it is their fault you have charges. My advice would be to be very alert when it comes to your money. Check balances online EVERYDAY (probably more than once), and record any checks you may have floating out there if you cannot remember or use checks a lot. Available balance is not the same as current balance. Make sure to ask for updated fee schedules so you know what your bank is going to charge you for. If you do want to dispute any charges on your account talk to a bank supervisor or manager....they do not like confrontation, so if you ask for them directly you may get what you want a little bit easier. If you have a substantial account or at least a substantial credit card balance you can always threaten to move your money else ware (granted, this only works if you are an asset to the bank and you are talking to someone that actually cares about the bottom line)...I could go on for days but those are the basics. And here�s one of my favorite stories that came out of that job: So a student goes and buys something at best buy for $180 but BB accidentally charges them $1800 for the purchase. They didn't have enough money on the debit card they used so the $1800 was covered by overdraft protection and transferred to the student�s credit card. Smart as they were they noticed that best buy made a mistake. They called best buy and had it resolved, but since they had used their debit card the 1800 was refunded to the checking account and not the credit card. So about a week later they notice they have 1800 dollars in there checking account and decide to go on a 2 week spending spree. So probably about 2 months after this they finally open up (probably the 3rd mailing) a letter explaining that they are 2 months late on there credit card bill and they owe 1800 dollars. This story ends up in my office with this person balling there eyes out about how they can't pay us back and that their dad is going to literally kill them. I had the hardest time not breaking out into laughter and quoting one of my favorite movies UHF "YOU SOOOOO STUPID!!!" So moral of the story - pay attention - read any mail from your bank - pay attention - if $1800 magically shows up in your checking account you probably shouldn�t spend it - pay attention I had this fight with my bank too. They actually told me they didn't know how to change it.

QUOTE (Brian @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 10:35 AM) Liked the episode. Terry O'Quinn is amazing. Locke is my favorite character on the show. I posted a couple of days ago that this episode could be the one to get him an Emmy. I was expecting more out of the meetings with Kate and Jack. Wasn't sure if his conversation with Jack was enough to push Jack into believer mode. Maybe we'll see flashbacks and more of those conversations. That scene in the apartment was epic. Keep in mind, at that point you are taking Ben's word that Jack bought a ticket.

Sounds a lot like my go arounds with National City. I was happy to see them get bought out. Chaging accounts is a b****, especially when you are trying to find a bank with locations in two different places. I have the same problem working in Illinois and working in Indiana.

Sweetness!

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 10:03 AM) I still love those supply and demand curves. "It's this damned medications they have me on..."

I believe it was ICE-T who said, "Pimpin ain't easy, but somebody gotta do it"

QUOTE (Tony82087 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 09:49 AM) Terry O' Quinn was unreal last night. His interactions with Walt, Kate, and Ben were so genuine and well done. To be honest, I haven't been crazy about the last 2-3 episodes, but last night changed everything. So good. The ability for him to show no suprise anymore, despite what life throws at him, is pretty impressive.

Here is the full article FWIW http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/wh...T-sox25.article

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 12:41 AM) Let's also hope his statement about Aardsma and Sisco essentially failing due to the lack of a secondary pitcher (and the ability to learn one or be taught one) doesn't also end up applying to Aaron Poreda. Pretty strong comments about how pitchers failing in Chicago just don't have what it takes to pitch anywhere effectively...and some interesting comments on Van Benschoten. I don't know about Aardsma, but Sisco couldn't learn a secondary pitch, because he didn't throw enough innings. Its my primary fear of Poreda getting moved up too quickly. Unless they fancy him as a closer, he needs to be throwing innings as a starter somewhere.

QUOTE (Sec101Row1 @ Feb 25, 2009 -> 10:57 PM) The White Sox play the Reds on June 19-21 (fri-sun) in Cincy. Tickets go on sale this sat. at 9am ET. Anyone ever been to the Great American Ballpark ? Looks like a great stadium. Its a nice place to see a game, but it gets really hot and humid during the summer. I sat in RF by the river, and it was a very neat spot

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 08:50 AM) So whenever the market goes down it's because of Obama. When it goes up it has nothing to do with him. Interesting. Because that is what is said.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 08:25 AM) Its like this with most inventions. The true inventor is usually obscured in history, by someone who came after and sold it better. One of America's greatest known inventors, Thomas Edison, was the perfect example of this. We owe way more of our existance to Nikola Tesla, and yet basically no one knows who he is.