jjamie12

You know... you don't absolutely HAVE to believe everything you read. You're allowed to think critically about another's views, and then decide for yourself.

Yes it would. The economics are what they are. Take a successful Bills team, move them to LA (or wherever) and the franchise value goes up by large percentage amounts. The Bills would probably double in value, at least, if they were moved to LA, for example.

Maybe I wasn't clear. Where do you think the luxury box prices are higher: Buffalo or (insert name of football city here)? In every instance except for Green Bay (I'm guessing) the answer is 'the other place'. And the reason for that is the lack of a corporate $$ in Buffalo. THAT is the problem, not the fact that luxury suites are sold or aren't sold. The problem is that they can't generate nearly the money from those sales as any other place in the league can.

No, it won't. Selling the damn luxury boxes is not the problem. The problem is the price of those luxury boxes.

And yet, somehow, you're sure that more government regulation is going to solve the problem, even though your own example provided just a small glimpse into how corrupt government is. Basically, you can't sell tickets for what their worth, unless you have enough cash to lobby Congress... Unreal.

If they could make money on them, why are't they? 'Greed' isn't stifling innovation. Of course Detroit, Big Oil, and Big Government are in bed together.

Are you actually being serious here? This is the dumbest, most ass-backward thing that I have read in this thread, and that's saying a lot. Please tell us you're joking about this, or hadn't thougth it through. Please. If you're serious, however, you should never, ever, again be engaged in any debate that involves, even tangentially, business or economics. If you actually think that greed STIFLES innovation, there is nothing that anyone can say to you that would bring you out of your fantasy-land. That statement: "Innovation is stifled by greed." is absolute, pure, 100% fantasy, stupid on its face, and represents the opposite of logic.

I would take Lynch, too. Favre or Edwards? The Jets entire offensive line or ours? (except Peters) The Jets entire defensive line or ours?

OK. To each his own.

The Jets sent 8 men to the Pro Bowl. We sent one, who didn't even deserve it. Somehow, we stack up with them, man for man?

That is just not true. You go way, way WAY too far.

You don't blitz your corner on a 'run blitz', fyi...

Well... I meant very soon in the historical sense of the word. Rush Limbaugh isn't the leading intellectual force on the right any more than Randi Rhodes is the leading intellectual force on the Left. And, again: The point isn't whether or not Obama will appoint good people. The point is that you're essentially asking for more power for the Obama administration. That power will still be in effect when people you don't agree with are in power.

Why do you think that corrupt cronies won't be part of the Obama Administration? Has there EVER been an administration that DIDN'T put 'cronies' in positions of power? Just think for a second about what you're advocating... Essentially, you want MORE power concentrated in the Obama Administration (aka The Federal Government). The problem is this: Obama and the Democrats aren't going to be in power for the rest of eternity. Soon, the Republicans that you hate so much are going to be back in the White House, and they're not going to just give the new-found power, back, Molson. They're going to take that power and expand even more! Very soon, the Republicans you detest so much are going to have more power to do things you detest, and it will be precisely because people like you think that "Putt(ing) good, dedicated civil servants in charge (will give)... you a much better chance of receiving positive results."

Sincerely, Jimmy Carter

Just curious... Do you know anything of Kanye West outside of what you've seen on SNL tonight? Also just curious... Is there any chance that you would have liked his performance even if he DID sing 'on-key'?

How is it even remotely possible that you can believe in this, given your constant hatred of everything that this government has done in its 8 years in power? Honestly, don't you see a huge disconnect there?

This story is all over the news, on every station that I have turned on, as well as The Washington Post, The New York Times, The LA Times, CNN.com, and MSNBC.com. I stopped looking after every single one of these news outlets had, at the very least, a link to this story on their front page. What, again, is your problem?

I doubt that you could draw the same parallels with 'real world' Supply and Demand here because (in theory at least) most universities are not-for-profit. I'm not so sure that your conclusion is wrong, though. Is the $5,000 a 'loan' or is it just free cash? It would seem to me that financial aid packages would just be reduced by the $5,000, rather than tuition going up. I think you'd still end up paying the same amount 'out of pocket' so-to-speak. Edit: I'm probably not smarter than you, so take this with a grain of salt.

Ouch. I just read through this whole enitre thread, and there are a few people who look really damned foolish right about now. (Unless there is more to the CA Ed Code that JC is intentionally leaving out) That doesn't even consider the whole "You can do whatever you want to do, just as long as my kids don't know about it!" meme. Doesn't this line of thinking, by definition, mean that you have some sort of 'problem' with it? And, if you have a 'problem' with it, doesn't that, by definition, make you, in some small way at least, prejudiced? Doesn't it? Think about it. People voted to ban two loving adults from getting married. Those same people are 'all for gay people getting married'. Really? Edit: Changed to 'prejudiced'.

Property taxes are baked into rents.

Of course, Jimbo doing that basically killed the team (creating the 'Bickering Bills') until he and Thurman got together and decided that 'calling guys out in the press' is really, really, stupid, and decided to never do it again.

To kick, or not to kick… that is the question. I have long felt that NFL coaches err in their clock management when down by 10 (or 11) points late in a football game. This afternoon, we Bills fans saw a potential example of this late in the fourth quarter of their loss to the New York Jets. What do we think of the Bills clock management in this situation? With 1:21 remaining in the game, the Bills have the ball on the Jets 25 down by 10 points, needing BOTH a TD and a FG to tie the game. I believe that the right move here is to ‘quick’ kick the field goal (rather than the traditional decision to get the TD first, and then worry about the FG later). I think this is the right move because teams ‘waste’ so much time moving from the 25 yard line to the end zone that the TD in this scenario is a Pyrrhic victory in a sense, leaving little time to move the ball into position for the game-tying field goal. As teams move ever closer to the goal line, the defense has to cover less and less field. As such, ‘working the sideline’ becomes harder and harder, and, likewise, the middle of the field continues to get smaller and smaller as the same amount of players are packed into ever shrinking space. So… if it is harder to get the ball to the sideline, and offensive players are tackled quicker in the middle of the field, it stands to reason that those last 25 yards take up the most time on the clock, relative to any other chunk of 25. Therefore, kick the field goal first and have more time on the clock in order to score the touchdown. The arguments against this type of decision are many, but the most compelling are these: 1- You may NOT get this close to the end zone again, so you should do your best to score the TD. I don’t find this particularly compelling because, at the 25 yard line, you are only about 10 yards closer to the end zone than the ‘far range’ of most kickers. In other words, if you can’t move the ball to the 25 on your NEXT drive (with more time to work with) then you probably weren’t going to get to the 35 with (in theory) much less time to work with. 2- If you miss the FG, you lose and the game is over; give your team the chance to use as much time as possible in order to keep the game alive. I find this argument more persuasive than the last, but it doesn’t quite sway me. You’ve got to make the field goal either way, whether it is first or second in order should be of no consequence. Getting back to today… Should the Bills have kicked the field goal with 1:21 showing on the clock? In hindsight, the Trent Edwards interception would seem to make this a no-brainer. Clearly, today, the Bills could have done no worse had they attempted the field goal rather than that fateful 1st down play. On closer inspection though, I must conclude that, owing more to Jets stupidity than Bills intelligence, the Bills *should* have been better off with going for the TD (in this particular situation) than kicking the field goal. Inexplicably, the Jets were single covering our outside receiver on the pass play in question, and James Hardy clearly had a step on his defender with no safety help in sight. A better thrown ball would surely have resulted in a TD, rendering this argument moot, as scoring a TD with 1:15 remaining is surely more desirable than scoring a FG with the same time remaining. As a general rule, I still like the idea of kicking the FG first, thus saving time for TD drive. However, in today’s game, I can’t say that this clock management decision was a factor in the loss. It was ALL execution, as the Bills had an open receiver in the end zone, but were unable to connect with him. What say you, TSW?

While true, any owner of these MBS (and any buyer worth their salt, too) already has this knowledge. Edit: Further, what you do with this knowledge separates the wheat from the chaff. Just because you know the zip codes doesn't *necessarily* mean you know what the risk is. You have a better idea, for sure. But, as I said, literally everybody should know the zips of the individual loans in any bond that you are buying. It's public knowledge in the case of most MBS, and anyone who buys a 144a most certainly gets the zipcode information from the seller prior to the transaction taking place.

GG, I don't think this is right. A corporate bond has no prepayment risk associated with it, and so trades different levels. I don't think it's at all clear how a bankruptcy judge would rule in this case... Would an MBS have recourse to the balance sheet outside of the individual mortgages that back it? Technically the g-gee that keeps getting earned every month would go towards buying out bad loans out of the MBS, and I'm not sure how that works in a bankruptcy situation that needs a definite end point? In other words, I don't think its clear that they would be treated pari pasu with the actual 'corporate' debt holders. Right. I totally agree with this.