gehringer_2

I think the way the portal started out was probably a fair system - you get one "free" transfer but a second after that and it costs you a year sitting out. But of course since those rules were rational they have been tossed to the side... I'd go a step further - you have to decide at the end of your 1st year - it's either the right program for you or it isn't - after that no free moves. But at this point I don't see the system going back to being more restrictive - so it's going to be more chaos until whatever eventually replaces the NCAA takes shape.

The lower tier bowls have always lost seniors who were going pro - I can't really argue with that, it's the 1600 guys in the portal that really made a mockery of some of this year's bowls. I'm guessing they end up changing the portal access dates.

Maybe nagging injury but could also fit the profile of a guy who sold out for HR's/launch angle and it backfired because he started missing the ball too much. His FB % and pull & were up but his LD % was way down along with the higher Ks.

it's not even that the fees are hidden, it's never been a secret that the credit card co takes a cut of every purchase. The question is whether having more COs in the market is actually likely to reduce the fees. You have 4 large ones now - if that is not enough the keep each other honest is 10 going to be? Maybe - but I don't think it's necessarily any kind of foregone conclusion. I have a suspicion this will turn out to be like the AT&T breakup. You initially had a bunch of new entries but then slowly the market re-agglomerated to a small number of carriers because that's just the nature of the market. Credit cards benefit from their universality - if there are too many of them that would inevitably be lost. Then eventually the more successful cards re-emerge and re-establish universality and the others would pretty much disappear- at least I see that as one possible outcome. The real beneficiary's of this bill might really just be other banks that want the chance because they think they could displace the one of the current 4 big four in the same basic system.

Not at all. it's funny. I guess once you work for a corporation once, there shouldn't be any mystery. The only reason a business exists is to part you from your money while giving up as little in return as possible. That is the basic set up, no-one should ever be surprised by that. Your job as a consumer is to do everything you can to pit every business you can against each other so you can get as much for your money as you can. Seller/buyer. It's just your basic predator/prey relationship the species has been dealing with for 100000 yrs cast into constantly evolving settings. The only thing that surprises me is when people don't get it. My SO has this eternal optimism that some-one out there selling something really wants to give her something for free. I've tried to persuade her otherwise over the years, and she's been disappointed by enough sales come-ons at this point to know better herself --- makes no difference. Something in human nature I guess.

did I see Morris will be playing? He's maybe the single biggest difference maker on that D. Assuming Edwards is nearly 100% by now, having Morris back is a bigger deal than missing Corum.

pretty rank stupidity. what other outcome did he think was possible? And that was not even a slip of the tongue or moment of confusion, that was a thoroughly premeditated drop. I think it happens when you travel in circles where a lot of people talk that way most of the time. It's like the line about telling the truth because it's the easiest story to remember - If you are a decent person all the time you don't have to keep remembering not to be jerk in your professional life.....

one thing that would help would be a reform of corporate governance structures mandated by corporate charters. I think in the modern world we are now sophisticated enough to know that investors are not the only stakeholders in American corporations and their exclusive representation on corporate boards is an anachronism. Half the managers at least at any corporation know that they are not managing their operation for its optimum long term growth but have no alternative because the governing imperative is short term profit. That is not an inevitability, it's simply a political choice we have made, or allowed to happen.

guards who can't shoot seems to be a southeastern MI epidemic.

I think there are two sides to this. The converse is that I do think the Tigers have a rep as an org that treats their players well, has a pliant press, and a generous fan base. You have players out there who have a more workman like view of their careers, and those guys are probably willing to come here for a fair offer. What you won't get are guys who only want to win. Aye there's the rub because if you don't at least have some of those guys you are going to end up with a team with no fire and no sense of urgency. But you don't need every guy in the clubhouse to be a hard core. So I think the Tigers can still add by FA, but the leadership core is going to have to be internally generated to get off the ground.

yeah - we pretty much have to hope that was the case.

yup. Pull back to 50,000 feet and you find the S&P will open 2023 about 18% higher than it opened 2020. That's still about 5.5% per annum compounded. That big bubble in between was mostly froth generated by pandemic money sloshing around with no-where else to go.

A downside issue I see with this legislation though is that if it does 'open up competition' and you do get dozens of credit card companies out there, then that becomes a mess (read "cost") of a different kind for retailers and consumers to deal with. This could be one of those, "be careful what you wish for" kind of things. Credit payment clearance is really something that should be a natural monopoly - run by the Post Office or something. When you think about it, it's exactly the kind of utility service where a regulated public monopoly would work just fine.

all Harris (and us) can hope for the near term is that there is more talent in the org than was being properly exploited - i.e. that better coaching and development management can unlock some value that was latent and do it pretty quickly (Kreidler, Perez, Keith etc). At the major league level that means mostly getting Meadow, Rodriguez, Schoop, and Baez on track. But the paradox or contradiction at the ML level is that if these players are or should have been or turns out to be better than they played last season, what does mean about Hinch? Or was Hinch ready to make coaching or data system changes that Al wouldn't support?

I didn't see last night's game - was Hellberg weak or the whole team bad early on?

LOL - all the credit card co rep is saying if you cut *our* profits, we will be less likely to run bonus programs - nothing in the legislation bans anything except the ability of the current operators to keep out competitors, which will likely reduce the size of the credit card surcharges current operators get away with. And the idea that it would help big retailers more than small is counterfactual. It's small businesses and low margin businesses that don't want you to use your credit card today because the surcharge, as evidenced by where you find cash discounts offered. Large retailers in general have more margin than small so I'd say the guy in the Yahoo story is pretty much spreading pure credit card co FUD. https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-marshall-introduce-bipartisan-credit-card-competition-act

I assume he came to mind because of the story that Gallant benched him? Not a great way to build a guy's trade value if you do want to move him!

IDK - I wonder how GMs around the league rate him at this point. My take would be that Edvinsson is too much, and of course Bertuzzi alone wouldn't do it.

not enough to get him.... It's hard to get anywhere making trades until you have an XS of something to trade out of. Wings still aren't that deep. It looks like they may have more wingers than they need in week or two, but no-one in that group is going to get you within a sniff of that trade.

The relationship between first time claims and the direction of the unemployment rate can vary, but in the last few cycles, unemployment tends not to go up when claims are less than ~300k/month, so the current numbers still indicate a tight job market.

Is Gleybar Torres available?

who knows what's doing on with that? They don't have any confidence in Ned, but that situation isn't going to change with him not playing. Hellberg is just a stop gap, but what's the gap if the situation with Ned is static? Or maybe Yzerman is trying to land another goalie as we type.

Did I miss the word on Legendary Lloyd's replacement for Toledo or is that still open?

The public is stuck in a sense when something big hits like COVID. Some kind of bailout plan was good idea - you write the best bill you can get through knowing before hand it will be abused but that is the price you pay for any kind of action. You can always look back in 20/20 and see what kind of clawbacks you should have included for the abusers, but the truth is the best you can do is try to remember the history for next time. How government deals with big business is really the political question of the age, from social media cos to dereg to Citizen's United to 'Industrial Policy'. The 180 deg political split between the parties today insures little to no progress is made. In my personal view that is because now that we have let the business camel's nose into the tent, their ability to spread political money acts to prevent any kind of needed system correction. It's one of those structural things that flies below the radar of the MS media fascination with personalities and the immediate threat of large swath of the public's growing sympathy with fascism and even War in Europe, but it's an important threat to the body politic none-the-less.

so you're saying Harris is approaching zero asymptotically?