bills_fan

Not if the bond market has anything to say about it, based on today's auction.

Wonder why we did not bring in Goff, he seems like a decent player.

I give the guy credit, if it was me, you'd have to pry the bonus out of my cold, dead hands.

Keep studying. A CFA designation will always get you hired on the street.

Guess we can put to bed the idea that Wall Street is not hiring. Keep pouring on the populist outrage over compensation and noone will be left at firms that took TARP to right that ship. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...&refer=home

The B word of it is they actually received the bonuses and paid income taxes (state and federal on it). Wonder if the return of the bonuses to AIG will require them to pay the gift tax?

Totally wrong. First, the school could actually have questioned her as to whetehr or not she had pills. Per the article they never asked. Second, if they suspected she had the pills (and was lying after questioning), could they not have contacted her parents, had the parents come to the school and dealt with the issue in this manner? Methinks the "strip search" goes far overboard in what constitutes "reasonable."

Sept/Oct Sundays free for golf

Hey Tim Any possibility the Bills sign a guy like Mike Goff to play LG? He would likely take a reasonable deal and would be a solid vet upgrade. Thanks.

I think Mike Goff is still available. He a solid vet at LG, blocked for LT in SD, and could probably be had for a reasonable price. Not a bad deal.

Hope you also agree with the bolded changes above....

Given the TO for one year signing, I'm hoping they go all in. If not, you know TO was just to sell a few tickets.

As a big Duke fan I totally agree with this post and Gordio's assessment. K has backed off a lot of guys since the Magette fiasco and have not recruited the type of athlete that can win one-on-one battles at crunch time...guys like Grant Hill, Roshawn McCloud, Maggette, Jason Williams etc. Outside of Laettner and Brand, Duke has never had great bigs, just shot-blocker/space-eaters. Zoubek is fine for what he provides (provided he stays out of foul trouble), he was great until getting into foul trouble in the first Mich game at the Garden (the only live Duke game I saw all year). Watching on TV gives you a skewed perspective. The UNC games really show how far above Duke UNC is talent-wise. Duke needs more athletes. They will always get a decent big or two and some great shooters and scrappy points (even tho I am not a Paulus fan), the difference is when Duke recruits the true athletes that can dominate, which they can get, same as UNC/Kansas. As for the 3 pointers, just compare and contrast the 2 Wake games, game 1 Duke shoots 4-22 and bombs (despite the bs close final score), game 2 8-23 and Duke rolls by 10. You can't just look at shooting percentages, they do not count how the 3 sets up Duke's halfcourt offense. When Duke is making 3's, the whole offense opens up for the halfcourt game of Henderson and Singler to a point.

Oh, I can only wish this team was the Bickering Bills....the team that won 12 games the year before and went to the AFC title game and then went onto 4 straight super bowls. Alas, I would take a 1 and done playoff appearance this year and not losing 2xs vs. NE.

I want to hear TO throw down a challenge to Belichek...try and stop me!! Bring some swagger to this team. I am pumped up over this move.

I love it, just what I want to hear from Trent. And for the record, I f&*^ing love this move. How Brandon got TO to agree to 1 year is beyond me. My guess is that we're going to see a monster offensive season. I am very excited to watch our offense this year. But lets not sleep on this...keep signing more players!!

Apparently the bears matched the bills offers, per rotoworld... Bears agreed to terms with RB Kevin Jones on a two-year contract worth approximately $4 million. The Bears had talked about finding a back to pair with Matt Forte, but in the end they're settling for Jones. They matched two offers from the Bills, so it looks like they believe another year removed from ACL surgery will allow him to contribute more offensively than he did last year with just 34 carries. Source: Chicago Tribune Related: Garrett Wolfe, Matt Forte

Don't think they can be overcome; thats what is currently puzzling Geithner/Summers. They have no clue what to do. This problem is extremely complex and needs a multi-prong solution, just to stabilize. Understand that the boom/bust business cycle will always be with us and is a function of the capitalist system. One big reason this one is so bad is that they kicked the can down the road in 2000-2002, didn't let the economy reset. If they did, we would have had a decent recession, but certainly nothing like the catastrophe today. I humbly offer the following suggestions... First we have to stablize the patient, that being the banking system. 1- Take $250 bil of TARP II and capitalize 5 brand new "good" banks. Locate them where the expertise is, 4 in NYC, 1 in Charlotte. IPO the newly capitalized banks into the market. Taxpayers will make money on that deal. Due to the fractionalized banking system, thats a fresh $2.5 trillion in new capital for lending and financing activities. This will help stabilize the banking system (in conjunction with #4 below). 2- Prohibit the owning of any CDS where you do not own the underlying bond. This is akin to prohibiting naked short selling in equities; its not legal in equities, nor should it be in debt. Lets understand what is happening here...lets say you can buy $10 mil of CDS on GE for approximately $200k (price is as of a few weeks ago); given margin requirements, that means you have to put up a maximum of $50k (in the most onerous margin accounts, usually much less) to effectively short $10 mil in GE bonds. The writer of the CDS then has to hedge his position or be out $10 mil, so he shorts GE stock or buys a put option, figuring he can make money to hedge his risk if the stock tanks. The writer of the put option also has to hedge, so he shorts GE. This creates massive downward pressure on GE stock. Rating agencies, using market cap in their models, then contemplate a downgrade, putting even more pressure on the stock. Multiply this by thousands, since you don't have to own the bond to buy the CDS and the stock gets destroyed. The buyer of the CDS has very little risk and the potential for a massive payoff, in effect a lottery ticket. This was not the original purpose of CDS (which are legitimate, hedging instruments for debtholders). 3- Prosecute the fraudsters. There has been a massive loss of confidence. The only way to restore it, is to let the markets know there is a cop on the beat. The US credit market is about $50 trillion (roughly). Approximately 2/3 of this is provided by non-bank lenders...pension funds, hedge funds, insurance companies etc. This is the so-called "Shadow Banking System." These are the buyers of most asset backed securities. They have been, IMHO, scammed. They bought AAA rated paper, sold by securitization banks who paid big bucks for that bundling and rating, diligenced by the originator bank on a no-doc basis, backed by Alt-A, Option ARMS on $400k homes owned by WalMart cart-pushers making $10 an hour. They are not buying this paper again. In fact, they are not buying any paper. Create an Office of Financial Fraud, run by Treasury or the SEC. Investigate all parties to this mess (including Congressmen who got cheap-o loans as a member of the Friends of Angelo program run by Countrywide). Investigate the liars on the loan applications (it is a Federal crime to lie on a mortgage application). Prosecute, prosecute, prosecute. Hell, locate the office in NY and hire only the lawyers laid off by big firms...plenty of market there. 4- Incent the Street. Not popular, but necessary. Rewrite all existing stock options held by employees at financial institutions that took TARP I to current market prices. You need people to try and fix this, who do not jump to the new banks in 1. After the patient is stabilized, some long term reforms to consider... 1- Calculate Street bonuses on a rolling 3 year basis. 2- Permit the SEC to hire uber-qualfied people at market rates. No one will work for 140k, when they can make 440k at a bank. The SEC (and Finra) misses many things because they simply do not have people qualified to understand them. The very few people who understood CDS, CDOs etc., are paid mega bucks by the banks. Let the regulators compete fairly for services. 3- Return to previous home loan underwriting standards, 20% down, no more than 33% of income etc.

Thats why the original idea was abandoned.

The original idea, purchasing the illiquid assets of the bank, was a good one, in theory. There were only two big problems with it... 1- $350 billion was nowhere near enough money, you'd need over $3 trillion to clear the system. 2- What price do you pay for the asset? If you pay the bank's marks (typically $0.90-$0.95 on the dollar), you are overpaying for the asset, by a signifcant amount, relative to market price. This would not play well politically. If you pay market (at the time, $0.40-$0.50 on the dollar, now much less), you will bankrupt the bank. Basically, the bank can hold the asset as a "Level 3" asset and mark it to a model on their books. Cutting the assets in half would have left many banks (including the big 4 of C, BAC, JPM and WFC) completely bankrupt.

I don't get this either, unless they plan on Mitchell shifting to SAM.

Hey Tim Why all the RBs coming into OBD? Could a Marshawn trade be in the works...Boldin perhaps? Thanks.

Sign Jones and Jackson; deal Lynch for Boldin? I like it.

Waters would be an upgrade over anyone we currently have on our roster.

Well thats foolhardy. I rarely agree with the NYT on political commentary, but there are some very well-researched, non-slanted educational articles. For example, the article on VAR linked by GG a few weeks ago. To dismiss an entire newspaper "no matter what" is ignorant. Disagree if you want, ignore certain sections/articles, but to not even consider an article due to the newspaper (not blog, newpaper, different standards there) in which it was printed is extremely closed-minded.