GA Russell

Yes, Tom, that is the point I was making in post #23. People were assigning values to their assets which were not backed up by the facts.

So Greenspan holding interest rates way down year after year after year had absolutely NOTHING to do with it? Bruce, I'm always happy to blame the Fed for inflation and whatever else can be pinned on it, but I don't think that low interest rates are the cause of this problem. I think that low interest rates are good. Let's consider the sub-prime mortgages. Let's say that a low-income family is convinced that it would like to buy a home, and the govt is pressuring the banks to make loans to such a family. Let's say that the family is paying $1,000 in rent, and believes that it can afford a $1,200 mortgage payment. The bank is not as particular about whom it lends its money to as it used to be, so it agrees to make the loan. The family is concerned about the $1,200 a month payment. It isn't concerned about the price of the house. With interest rates at 5%, the price of the house is going to be higher than it would be at 10%, because the family is only going to agree to pay $1,200 regardless of what the interest rates are. The real estate developers and those wishing to sell their homes like to see a higher price for obvious reasons, but the low-income buyer doesn't care. He cares only about the monthly payment. So then the husband loses his job, and they cannot meet the $1,200 payment on only the wife's salary. So they default on the mortgage loan. They return to a $1,000. apartment. It seems to me that that is the nature of subprime loans. They are risky and shouldn't have been made in the first place. I don't see that to be the fault of Alan Greenspan's low interest rates.

I got a copy in the mail Saturday, but haven't had a chance to listen yet. I'll give it a spin sometime in the next week, and let you know what I think.

I think you're being silly by suggesting that the solution to the crisis is to turn to the Libertarians, the one group who would remove any and all regulation immediately. This problem was brought upon us in large part due to the wonderful Republican "free enterprise solution" of removing "unnecessary" regulation. Now that this has been discredited, I don't think you'll convince many (other than Berigan) that we should carry this approach even farther... Moose, let me make a couple of points regarding the bipartisan nature of the problem and the Libertarian view. 1) My understanding is that this this sub-prime lending mess was started by Bill Clinton. For political (not economic) reasons, his administration pressured the banks to lend money to the poor (read "blacks"), with the threat of penalties if they didn't. This continued under the Bush administration. The banks would not have made the loans in the first place if they had not been pressured to by the government. 2) The Libertarians oppose such government pressure regarding telling the banks how to do business. 3) The Libertarians oppose all govt/taxpayer bailouts of private corporations. 4) Think in terms of a business cycle. The Libertarians believe that if the market is allowed to do what it thinks is best, of course mistakes ("malinvestments") will be made. But without govt intervention, they will be soon corrected, and the cycle will be mild. Each time the govt intervenes, the correction is postponed and the malinvestments will continue, which will make the cycle more exaggerated, and the eventual resolution more painful. 5) In this case of the past sixteen years, there has been a great deal of corruption by both the bankers and the Congress. I don't believe that any theory will work well if all the parties involved are crooked. For example, I learned yesterday that Dem party hack Jamie Gorelick (I imagine that googling her will reveal what you may not know about her, such as her prohibitiing the 9/11 Commission from doing its job properly) has been with Fannie Mae since Clinton left office, and in that time she has been paid $26 million! There was another fellow from the Clinton budget office who has also been with Fannie Mae who has been paid a similar amount. I learned today that the Obama campaign has received $560,000 cash from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Lehman Bros alone! This doesn't pass the smell test. I think the problem is clearly bipartisan. 6) One final point about the Libertarians. They are in favor of the free market theory, not capitalism per se. What we have here is the so-called "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor", where the poor have to pay for their mistakes, but the rich get tax-funded bailouts. Clearly the Libertarians are opposed to this. edit for typo

It looks like AIG is in a race with WaMu. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...refer=worldwide WaMu Rating Lowered to Junk by S&P on Mortgage Losses (Update4) By Ari Levy Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) --Washington Mutual, the biggest U.S. savings and loan, had its credit rating cut to junk by Standard & Poor's because of the deteriorating housing market. S&P reduced its rating on Seattle-based WaMu to BB- from BBB-, leaving it three levels below investment grade, the ratings firm said today in a statement. ``Increasing market turmoil and the related impact from managing its concentrated mortgage franchise in this troubled housing and credit cycle led to the downgrade,'' S&P wrote. S&P cut its rating on the subsidiary bank to BBB- from BBB. S&P followed similar announcements last week from Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. WaMu, which has reported $6.3 billion of losses in the last three quarters because of soured mortgages, said on Sept. 11 that it expects a third- quarter loan loss provision of $4.5 billion.....

Here's a C-Span video from a year ago in which Ron Paul on the floor of the US Congress predicts what is happening today if the government doesn't get its spending under control.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/15/news/compa...index.htm?t=new September 15, 2008: 8:16 PM EDT NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The pressure on troubled insurer American International Group intensified Monday night as a credit rating agency downgraded the firm. Another cut could prove very costly to AIG, which is scrambling to raise much-needed capital. Fitch Rating downgraded AIG to A, from AA-, saying the company's ability to raise cash is "extremely limited" because of its plummeting stock price, widening yields on its debt, and difficult capital market conditions. The company could be required to post $10.5 billion of additional collateral if it is downgraded one notch by one of the other major rating agencies and $13.3 billion of collateral if downgraded by both, Fitch said in a statement, citing AIG's July 31 estimates. Standard & Poor's late Friday warned it might downgrade AIG, placing the company on CreditWatch negative. Hoping to avoid such downgrades, state and federal officials raced Monday to help the insurer gain access to much needed cash. Credit downgrades could doom its business...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/14/bus...isis.php?page=1

Don Matthews has benched Kerry Joseph!!!! He'll be replaced by Cody Pickett (who?). Everybody knew that Matthews would make some changes, but who would have expected this? The Argos also signed Tim Strickland today. I had thought that his career was over. Maybe after this week it will be. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Tor...6772326-cp.html

A number of radio shows crossed over to TV in the early 50s, many with the radio cast. IMO the best were Dragnet and The Jack Benny Show. Through 1955, many of these shows ran on both radio and TV. The most famously disappointed radio cast was Gunsmoke's (William Conrad, Parley Baer, the guy who played Floyd the Barber, and Georgia Ellis). They all felt really bad that new actors were chosen for the TV series. In addition, the director of the radio Gunsmoke was not chosen to direct the TV show. I forget his name, something like Norman Connall. If I recall the years correctly, Have Gun Will Travel was a big hit on TV its first year, the 1958-59 season. It was decided to add it to radio for the next season, starring my favorite actor John Dehner, and directed by the guy who directed the Gunsmoke radio shows. It was the only show to move from TV to radio of that era. Decades later they made a radio series of The Twilight Zone. I have the entire set of radio shows. It was on for two years. The first year they used the TV scripts from the TV's first season, written by Gene Roddenberry and others. Honestly, they weren't very good. But the second year, they used their own scripts, written for the radio show, often by a woman named Ann Dowd. They were outstanding! The radio director was very proud of the fact that they were able to create shows that were superior to the TV shows. He felt that this proved that he should have gotten the Gunsmoke TV job. The second year of the radio Have Gun is my all-time favorite radio show. My second favorite is the western John Dehner did immediately before that called Frontier Gentleman. A couple of years ago I picked up at Best Buy the DVD set of the first TV season of Have Gun. I should have known that the scripts would seem just as mediocre on TV as they were on radio. The set was a real disappointment. After hearing Year #2 of the radio show, it's a mystery to me why the TV show was so popular when it hit the scene. (By the way, I remember my dad's aunt excusing herself to retire to her bedroom to listen to Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel on the radio in 1960. That got me started on listening to radio shows. I was fortunate enough to listen each week to the last year, 1960-61, the radio Gunsmoke was broadcast.)

I think you people are being silly by treating this as a Repub/Dem partisan issue. The corruption on Wall Street and their bought and paid for politicians of both parties has been obvious for over a decade. The Libertarians/Misesians have been predicting this would happen since the 60s, at least. Ron Paul this spring even based his presidential campaign on the corruption of the Federal Reserve Board. And every media organization I am aware of treated him like a quack. That's nothing new - the only response the Libertarians/Misesians have ever received for their warnings has been derision. I think this meltdown is as good a reason as any to vote third party across the board this November. Let the liberals vote for the Green Party, and the conservatives vote for the Constitution and Libertarian Parties. What a change in Congress we would see then!

Happy Birthday gs!

Happy Birthday Dan!

Ten years ago I had an old, slow computer, and the process of burning a disc would fail when I burned the CD-R at a rate higher than the minimum. My current CD burner is four years old, and I still burn them at the slowest rate, which is 4x. I've had no problems burning or playing at that rate.

I can't say that the name means anything to me, but I remember Please Don't Squeeze My Sharmon.

British Columbia Lions 28....Saskatchewan Roughriders 23 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...ory/GlobeSports Decent game. Buck Pierce had a pretty fair game for the Lions. Michael Bishop never got going for the Riders. The Riders' D kept them in the game.

Edmonton Eskimos 38....Hamilton Tiger-Cats 33 http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home http://www.sportsnetwork.com/merge/tsnform...aspx?id=4179511 Great game! Very little defense except for the many interceptions. I think that Ricky Ray threw 4 ints. Casey Printers threw 3 ints in the first half alone. Former Ticat Jason Goss had 3 ints, running 2 back for TDs. Tough loss for the Ticats. They took a 2 point lead with two minutes to go in the game, but couldn't hold on.

Thanks medjuck!

Thanks for the tip, Bruce! I'm glad you said that, medjuck. I would like to read them in the order that they were written/published. Any idea where I might find such a chronological list?

Happy Birthday vibes!

The Als have a player named Imho (pronounced "ee-moe") who had a decent game last night, considering that the Als didn't look very good. No truth to the rumor that next year they'll sign people named Ymmv and Fwiw!

Calgary Stampeders 41....Montreal Alouettes 30 http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home The Stamps had a big lead after three. The Als scored 20 points in the fourth to make the score respectable. Considering how much better the Als are than the rest of the East, it looks like we might see an all Western Grey Cup game. Henry Burris passed Peter Liske for team career passing yards, now trailing only Doug Flutie. I had Liske's bubble gum card when he was a rookie with the Jets. The next year the Jets signed Joe Namath, and it was good-bye Liske!

Winnipeg Blue Bombers 39....Toronto Argonauts 9 http://www.sportsnetwork.com/merge/tsnform...aspx?id=4179314 http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home Milt Stegall entered the game 16 yards behind Allen Pitts' career record for most pass receiving yards. His first catch was a 16 yard TD pass, so that tied the record. His second catch was a 92 yard pass and run TD catch to break the record. Some day, huh? Kerry Joseph stunk the joint out. He threw 3 ints in the first half. I'm sure everyone in the stands was wishing that the Argos hadn't given away Michael Bishop, considering how well he has done in Saskatchewan. Don Matthews had told the players that he didn't owe anyone on the team anything, and that he considered this game to be a tryout for everyone. So I have to think that there will be some changes made before the next game. http://www.thestar.com/Sports/Football/article/497785 ***** I'm now listening to the Stamps-Als game. With the score tied at 10 and less than a minute to go in the half, the Stamps score a TD to take a 7 point lead. The Als go two and out, and the Stamps have the ball on the Montreal 52 with time for one play. Henry Burris heaves it up into the endzone, and Johnson catches it while covered by three guys!

The price here jumped today from $3.63 to $4.19.

As we have discussed before, I was an AFL fan when I was a boy. I had Sherrill Headrick's bubble gum card in 1961 when he played for the Dallas Texans. He was good. I didn't know that his teammates called him "Psycho"! I guess that was the sort of information the announcers of the time didn't pass on to the audience! Here's his LA Times obit: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...0,4500296.story September 11, 2008 <h2 style="">Sherrill Headrick</h2>Aggressive linebacker Sherrill Headrick, 71, a former Dallas Texans and Kansas City Chiefs linebacker, died Wednesday, the Chiefs announced. The Kansas City Star reported on its website that Headrick died of cancer. Nicknamed "Psycho" by his teammates for his aggressive play and personality, Headrick played eight seasons (1960-67) for the Texans/Chiefs franchise in the old American Football League before it merged with the NFL. He was selected to five all-AFL squads and started at middle linebacker during the team's AFL title wins in 1962 and 1966, as well as the first Super Bowl. He spent his final season with the Cincinnati Bengals after the 1968 AFL expansion draft and finished his career with 15 interceptions. He was inducted into the Chiefs Hall of Fame in 1993. At 6 feet 2 and a shade over 200 pounds, Headrick was small for his position but known for his ability to play through pain and injuries. In his rookie season he collided with a teammate during pregame warmups and, although his neck ached, he played anyway. Two days later doctors discovered he had a cracked vertebra. "That's why they called him Psycho," former Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson said years later. "Who would play with a broken neck?" In recent years he was wracked by debilitating arthritis. Sherrill Darlon Headrick was born March 13, 1937, in Waco, Texas, and was a star at Texas Christian University. He left TCU after three years and played one season of pro ball in Canada before signing with the Chiefs as a free agent. [He is not listed in my CFL Encyclopedia. He may have played in the Ontario league (the Ontario Rugby Football Union, aka the ORFU) like Gino Cappaletti did.]