southsider2k5

That is the flaw in your whole arguement. Maggs has done nothing to demonstrate that he is even remotely healthy. Nothing. In fact all of his actions (and inaction) have seemed to indicate the opposite. I can't believe you are arguing to give 20% of our our payroll to a guy who could be the next Joe Charboneau, just as easily as he could be himself again. That is reckless at best.

What holes would we open up by signing two free agents?

Wow, I would have guessed this rumor would be dead after the Mets insane offer. Very interesting to say the least. Anyone know who is Pedro's agent? Anyone the Sox have worked with before? And how well do Ozzie and Pedro know each other, if at all?

They can about illegal ones.

Armando Rios was connected to Balco and Bonds through his time in SF.

Damn, I was all excited too. That would have been the steal of the century for Lazy Eddy.

I busted my parents at age 4. The bathroom was downstairs, and I had to go!

No doubt. But the WTO allowed the governments of forgein industry to singlehandedly destroy and Amercian industry. That is supposed to be something that the WTO prevents. That is the whole reason for their exsistance. Yet they refused to penalize governments for illegal subsidies, and refused to allow the American's to protect themselves from the undue competition. And that is the issue. Multiplier affects on other industries are immaterial to the WTO, and that was certianly proved by the WTO allowing these same governments to pick and choose the industries retributive tariffs were to be placed on, for strickly PR and punative reasons, in order to punish the US for protecting itself. They certianly didn't care about who lost their jobs then.

Interesting except it is complete garbage. Why are economists avoiding the obvious? The US government wants a weaker dollar to save American jobs and exports. The US keeps getting unduely screwed by the WTO. The US isn't allowed to protect its markets from activities that would get US companies drug into antitrust courts. Forgien governments subsidize things like steel, which allows them to sell below cost, yet the WTO rules against the US for protecting their industries. The WTO keeps ruling against the US in these type of suits, which means the US has to protect its economy in another way. What they are doing now is devaluing the dollar in order to bring the unfair cost of exports into a reasonable level. How well is this strategy serving America? Right now many of our key industries are beginning to recover from their unfair attacks. Once again using the example of steel, huge consolidation and many bankruptcies took place within this industry. Many people lost a lifetime worth of work and pensions, all because of these predatory practices. But the WTO deemed this as immaterial in reference to the protective tariffs that the US tried to use to save American jobs and industry. Now the US has moved the dollar in an amount relative to the tariffs that they wanted in the first place. Now all of the worlds imports an subject to what amounts to an artificial tariff on anything that they import to the US. They either have to drop their prices in their home currency to a respective level to match the fall in the dollar, guarenteeing a lose in revenue- or leave their prices the same, and have less people in the US buy their goods because they are now that much more expensive than their relative US competition. The whole song and dance about savings rates, and debt spending is also misleading. If you look at exchange rates for a currency like the Yen that has been around, and also at debt levels in relation to GDP, and you will see that the mid 80's saw much higher debt%'s and much higher values in what the Yen was based at vs the dollar. The whole idea that we owe more money so the dollar is collapsing is ludacris. The writer seems to forget that the whole economy is much, much larger than it was at his reference points. If you have more money, you can spend more money, seems to be a basic lesson to me. Once again, the percentage of the debt vs GDP is lower now than in the mid 80's, yet the dollar held strong against the yen, which was then considered to be the dollars main rival. The dollar didn't devalue against the Yen until the late 80's, which happened debt/GDP% was crashing. Kinda puts someholes in the authors theory IMO. The other thing that the author seems to forget was the ending of the gold standard in the 70's, and the oil shock that was going on. When the gold standard ended it meant that the dollar had no guaranteed value anymore. Prior to the 70's the dollar could be traded for a dollars worth of silver and gold, which was guaranteed to be on hand, by the US mint. When the gold standard ended, it was siezed upon by conspiritalists, who figured that this meant the dollar would collapse vs the rest of the world, because now its only value is what relative to what confidence people have in the dollar. And as for the stagflation of the 70's people were also dumping the dollar because oil prices had just murdered the American economy. Fuel charges went up 10 fold at the pump over the course of of a few years. Prices exploded, while the economy tumbled. Stocks collapsed at the sametime. The American economy was way overvalued because of this stuff, and the dollar collapsed because of it. It had nothing to do with how many dollars were in circulation, that's just ridiculous. And as for the Chinese, that is ridiculous as well. Long ago the Chinese pegged their Yuan to the value of the dollar, and took whatever artificial means it needed to support those levels. For a decade at least the Yuan has been extremely overvalued, that has been well reported. About a year ago, the US government asked the Chinese to remove the peg, and let the Yuan float, like all of the rest of the worlds major economics powers let their currencies float. The Chinese refused. Now that they American dollar has been artificially pushed down again, the Chinese are forced to take action in order to maintain the value of their own currency, because of its artificial valuations. The Chinese are subscribing to an opposite theory trying to maintain a strong Yuan, as they have been, as they have locked out forgein competition, so they have no consequenses for having an artificially strong Yuan. This guy really needs to go back and review his history a little bit in relation to his macro classes.

Even the walk to work was interesting this morning. They still have large stretches of Clark, LaSalle, and Adams closed off to pedestrians and motorists. Tons of Chicago's finest standing in the rains, all pissy to be there.

Good to see you're alive and well Heather!!!

Maybe Self will schedule some teams and leave the Plains states next year... :rolly

Where did I say I wasn't? You're really digging for bias where there is none. Go back and read my original statement, there is plenty of blame for everyone, the military included. I don't know why you all have to put words into my statement. I answered your particular question on who was using him here, and you morphed that answer to mean everything. The original answer was plural people and causes. I wish you wouldn't make assumptions based on a your leading question.

ooooh oooh oooh

IIRC the games the Illini play in Chicago at the UC still have tickets available.

So has anyone else ordered, or planning to order these???

The article had a whole history of leading French pundits, politicians, and writers looking down on Americans as a whole. I don't see what YAS said as any different than what was written about.

I fixed it

Mets over Sammy

Well I guess I liked The Critic's idea for a name (even though it was a joke) the best. This is my first attempt at a blog, so now I will probably have writers block for a week http://boringtheworld.blogspot.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/06/national...tner=ALTAVISTA1

To settle this for once and for all... George Carlin

The media.