Boston is out of Olympic bidding. So it is logical that LA will be the U.S. bid for 2024. I think they will have tough competition with Paris, Rome and Hamburg in the ring. So I propose a brand new idea for Olympics. Join hosting with LA and SF. SF was behind Boston and LA when the USOC decided on Boston last time. So I don't think it can win on its own. But I think giving SF some events would make it very interesting. For example: the open swim can be to Alcatraz. Mountain biking can be in the hills of Berkeley. Triathlon near the Golden Gate. An LA Olympic is going to be spread out anyway so why not spread it out 380 miles north? The infrastructure of LA is much better than the Bay area for multiple sports but I think giving SF some events would boost the chance of the U.S. winning the bid.
I think the NFL is right about upholding Brady's suspension. The fact that he destroyed his cell phone right at the time he was supposed to meet investigators make it seem like he had something to hide. I mean if it was pictures of another supermodel then it would have only enhanced his reputation and so it is likely it had something to do with deflategate. So just take the punishment and then come back to prove he is still the best big time qb in the NFL!
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Sunday, July 26, 2015
The first GOP debate is next month. It will be on Fox News and Fox is limiting it to the top 10 candidates in the polls. I agree that 16 people on stage is to unruly. Viewers will have trouble remembering who said what. I think 10 is even too many. I would have gone a different and do what European soccer has done for decades: multiple divisions.
I would use the polls just like Fox is doing and also what the BCS had been doing. I would have the 1 to 4 debate at Fox, 5-8 at CNN, 9-12 at MSNBC, and 13-16 at C-SPAN. The top three divisions can rotate for the second and third debate alas college football style. C-Span is the minor bowl. By the four debate there should be less than 12 left and we can regroup. But after each of the first debate the grouping maybe different as the poll result maybe different. This would be like the relegation of European soccer leagues where the top three in each division move up and the bottom three move down. With only four players, each player can give the viewers a much better sense of their personality and ideas. If they do well in a debate, they can move up or if they do poorly they move down. If you have not move up to the top two division after 3 debates you are sunk anyway.
Right now with a lot of people on stage, thing can get messy. Can you imagine Trump refusing to yield the floor and 9 guys trying to talk over him? I would use soccer rules again where a moderator can issue a yellow card if someone refuses to stop after the whistle blows indicating time is up. Two yellows means a red card and you are escorted off the stage. This will insure more civility and more debates on issues rather than name calling. Of course the GOP is not known to like international things so soccer rules may not work here. So 15 yard penalties or 2 minutes in the penalty box may have to be used against anyone who does not behave!
I would use the polls just like Fox is doing and also what the BCS had been doing. I would have the 1 to 4 debate at Fox, 5-8 at CNN, 9-12 at MSNBC, and 13-16 at C-SPAN. The top three divisions can rotate for the second and third debate alas college football style. C-Span is the minor bowl. By the four debate there should be less than 12 left and we can regroup. But after each of the first debate the grouping maybe different as the poll result maybe different. This would be like the relegation of European soccer leagues where the top three in each division move up and the bottom three move down. With only four players, each player can give the viewers a much better sense of their personality and ideas. If they do well in a debate, they can move up or if they do poorly they move down. If you have not move up to the top two division after 3 debates you are sunk anyway.
Right now with a lot of people on stage, thing can get messy. Can you imagine Trump refusing to yield the floor and 9 guys trying to talk over him? I would use soccer rules again where a moderator can issue a yellow card if someone refuses to stop after the whistle blows indicating time is up. Two yellows means a red card and you are escorted off the stage. This will insure more civility and more debates on issues rather than name calling. Of course the GOP is not known to like international things so soccer rules may not work here. So 15 yard penalties or 2 minutes in the penalty box may have to be used against anyone who does not behave!
Sunday, July 19, 2015
The Iran nuclear deal is made. Can it passes Congress? Well, it won't pass but it probably will survive a veto override as I don't think the GOP can get two third majority in the Senate. When this deal goes into effect, it will be part of Obama's legacy for years to come. Actually, Obama has a few things that will be looked at by historians in the future. Even though he may not leave office popular, I think history will be kind to him.
Whether you like them or not, presidents usually have at least one thing that defined their tenure. FDR obviously had the New Deal,, Truman used the bomb, Eisenhower railed against the military industrial complex, Kennedy the Cuban missile crisis, LBJ the Great Society, Nixon the opening of China, Carter the Israel Egypt peace treaty, Reagan the fall of USSR, Bush1 the first Gulf war, Clinton the tech age, Bush II 9/11. I think unpopular presidents like Nixon and Carter are looked upon as much better when their legacies are evaluated years later. I think Obama will also be better in the years ahead although it is not a slam dunk.
Obamacare and getting out of the recession are controversial subjects that will be debated years from now. Just in recent weeks, gay marriage won in the Supreme Court. The U.S. embassy is set to reopen in Cuba and now the Iran deal. There will be many people who are against these and will continue to think Obama is a terrible president. Obamacare and the Iran deal still can blow up in his face. But I think in the future gay marriage and opening of Cuba will be accepted as the norm. And there is no argument that the economy is better today than when he took office although one can argue that is not his doing. So I think overall Obama is likely to be judged well in history.
Whether you like them or not, presidents usually have at least one thing that defined their tenure. FDR obviously had the New Deal,, Truman used the bomb, Eisenhower railed against the military industrial complex, Kennedy the Cuban missile crisis, LBJ the Great Society, Nixon the opening of China, Carter the Israel Egypt peace treaty, Reagan the fall of USSR, Bush1 the first Gulf war, Clinton the tech age, Bush II 9/11. I think unpopular presidents like Nixon and Carter are looked upon as much better when their legacies are evaluated years later. I think Obama will also be better in the years ahead although it is not a slam dunk.
Obamacare and getting out of the recession are controversial subjects that will be debated years from now. Just in recent weeks, gay marriage won in the Supreme Court. The U.S. embassy is set to reopen in Cuba and now the Iran deal. There will be many people who are against these and will continue to think Obama is a terrible president. Obamacare and the Iran deal still can blow up in his face. But I think in the future gay marriage and opening of Cuba will be accepted as the norm. And there is no argument that the economy is better today than when he took office although one can argue that is not his doing. So I think overall Obama is likely to be judged well in history.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
The news about whether Greece will go bankrupt and be out of the Euro union has dominated the financial news in the past week. But more important to world economy is what is happening in the Chinese stock market. Will take a quick look at both situations today and I can discuss in more specific detail if anyone is interested.
So Greece needs another bail out and it tried to get the money without having more austerity measures dictated to them by other European countries, particularly Germany. But it looks like they have no choice but to capitulate and do what other countries tell them to do in order to get more loans. What is not clear to me is this: after the first two bailouts, did the Greeks do the austerity measures that were demanded of them? If they did, then obviously austerity alone is not turning around the economy and maybe a stimulus plan maybe better. If they did not raise taxes and cut back public spending as they were obligated to do, then they need to do these things that the creditors demanded of them now.
My feeling is that austerity alone will not be enough. If salaries of public employees and pensions are decreased, the likely effect is that people will not be able to spend as much and thus the economy will not pick up. Also raising tax when people have no income will not work either. I mean, neither liberals nor conservatives in this country would recommend these two methods. The GOP would decrease salaries and pensions but not raise taxes. The Democrats would increase salaries and pensions and increase taxes. So what is best for Greece? I am not sure but I don't think the demands of the European union by themselves, even if followed precisely by Greece, will not enough.
Far more important than Greece is China in the world economy. First of all, even though trillions of dollars of paper money was lost in the past couple of weeks in the Chinese markets, it is not as bad for China as a whole as it looks. The Shanghai market had doubled in the past year and so even a 40% drop still leaves it with a big gain for the year. The problem is that it was a big bubble and it drew into the market people who are totally unsophisticated to investing and those people are losing their entire life savings. What is also troubling is that things have stabled in the last couple of days due to the intervention of the government. If the government's efforts do not keep thing well in the long term then it will cause big problems throughout the world. But if the government's effort are successful, then it may create a belief that the government will always bailout investors and worse bubbles are going to happen in the future. So I don't think that what the government did in the past week are good for the long term.
The one winner out of China's problem is Hong Kong. The HK market did not go up like the Shanghai market did in the past year but its drop was much less than those of China overall. It shows that the HK investors are much more sophisticated and the HK market as a whole is much more mature than those of Shanghai. It shows that while China will eventually use Shanghai as the financial center of the country, HK is still a very important part of China's financial relations with the rest of the world in the foreseeable future.
So Greece needs another bail out and it tried to get the money without having more austerity measures dictated to them by other European countries, particularly Germany. But it looks like they have no choice but to capitulate and do what other countries tell them to do in order to get more loans. What is not clear to me is this: after the first two bailouts, did the Greeks do the austerity measures that were demanded of them? If they did, then obviously austerity alone is not turning around the economy and maybe a stimulus plan maybe better. If they did not raise taxes and cut back public spending as they were obligated to do, then they need to do these things that the creditors demanded of them now.
My feeling is that austerity alone will not be enough. If salaries of public employees and pensions are decreased, the likely effect is that people will not be able to spend as much and thus the economy will not pick up. Also raising tax when people have no income will not work either. I mean, neither liberals nor conservatives in this country would recommend these two methods. The GOP would decrease salaries and pensions but not raise taxes. The Democrats would increase salaries and pensions and increase taxes. So what is best for Greece? I am not sure but I don't think the demands of the European union by themselves, even if followed precisely by Greece, will not enough.
Far more important than Greece is China in the world economy. First of all, even though trillions of dollars of paper money was lost in the past couple of weeks in the Chinese markets, it is not as bad for China as a whole as it looks. The Shanghai market had doubled in the past year and so even a 40% drop still leaves it with a big gain for the year. The problem is that it was a big bubble and it drew into the market people who are totally unsophisticated to investing and those people are losing their entire life savings. What is also troubling is that things have stabled in the last couple of days due to the intervention of the government. If the government's efforts do not keep thing well in the long term then it will cause big problems throughout the world. But if the government's effort are successful, then it may create a belief that the government will always bailout investors and worse bubbles are going to happen in the future. So I don't think that what the government did in the past week are good for the long term.
The one winner out of China's problem is Hong Kong. The HK market did not go up like the Shanghai market did in the past year but its drop was much less than those of China overall. It shows that the HK investors are much more sophisticated and the HK market as a whole is much more mature than those of Shanghai. It shows that while China will eventually use Shanghai as the financial center of the country, HK is still a very important part of China's financial relations with the rest of the world in the foreseeable future.