Kitty made a friend!

zzaman · 2012-05-24T06:05:30.311227+00:00

Huehuehuehuehuehue!

tinyj316 · 2012-05-24T02:43:03.299806+00:00

Like I said, it would be good. But it's probably much better in EDH (where decks aren't nearly as fast or reliable) than it would be in Legacy. I think there have been enough cards printed in the decade since its banning to effectively combat it.

tinyj316 · 2012-05-24T02:32:24.117584+00:00

I'm pretty sure people said the same thing when Time Spiral was unbanned and that hasn't warped the format. Hermit would definitely get played but I disagree that it would cause huge damage. It's been around a decade since it was banned. I think enough time has passed and better cards have been printed for Wizards to at least try it.

thudium · 2012-05-24T02:17:52.264280+00:00

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

"No," says the man in Washington, "it belongs to the poor."

"No," says the man in the Vatican, "it belongs to God."

"No," says the man in Moscow, "it belongs to everyone."

colleninbabeland · 2012-05-24T00:00:37.903713+00:00

I'd hire you except you're the reason I see a stick man humping a triangle every time I go to f7u12...

Horse_Bot_3k · 2012-05-23T23:13:11.929258+00:00

The 'gun in the anus' move. Oldest trick in the book.

numeroprimo · 2012-05-23T21:53:00.708620+00:00

"Enemy Pave Low inbound!"

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU....

aquilesbaeza · 2012-05-23T21:41:24.995781+00:00

He missed? That bear was right in front of him.

aquilesbaeza · 2012-05-23T20:29:08.227519+00:00

Hmm. If I'm understanding this correctly though, the 10mm has over less than half of the impact power than the stubnose. So would you want to use that against a bear or is a 10mm just an all purpose gun?

aquilesbaeza · 2012-05-23T20:14:53.501440+00:00

Interesting. Though if I were to be walking around bear country, wouldn't a shotgun or rifle be a better weapon to have?

Suedars · 2012-05-23T20:12:05.576583+00:00

Oh god. Now I'm going to be disappointed when they don't...

aquilesbaeza · 2012-05-23T20:03:10.335710+00:00

Maybe the gun guys around can answer me this: why would I want a gun with that much recoil? Assuming the first shot misses, I'd be left wide open with my arms above my head.

tinyj316 · 2012-05-23T18:42:42.304439+00:00

I'm saying it's been 10 years since those cards were banned. I think the time has come to at least see what would happen if they unbanned them.

Orangutan · 2012-05-23T18:27:37.711714+00:00

Yes having more banks will mean the need for greater oversight which is why I'm not suggesting just breaking up the banks will accomplish everything. Though, after the crisis, the need for greater oversight and regulation seems to be self-evident. One would think having smaller banks with fewer clients would make the oversight process go smoother than having to wade through all of the red tape a company with millions of clients can build up.

Yes more banks means more dominoes, but if the shit hits the fan, hopefully if one bank fails, having more dominoes in between will allow the other banks to make the adjustments necessary to prevent their own bank from failing in time. With only a few dominoes, that time frame is shortened significantly.

I suppose in the end it's all a matter of preference. While larger banks can lead to greater liquidity and stability in their own way, I think having only a few institutions being the backbone of a country's economy opens up too many avenues for failure and makes exacerbates the risks and blunders that happen in these companies. The potential risks simply don't outweigh the potential benefits imo, especially in the short-term as we try to rebuild this economy, an economy that was felled in no small part by excessive risk-taking.

Orangutan · 2012-05-23T17:49:59.372540+00:00

Well the obvious risk of having such large banks is that should one fail, it would leave quite a bit larger hole than if a smaller bank did. When you centralize a large part of the economy in only a few banks, blunders that would be small in smaller banks would be amplified. The risks that would could be made by smaller banks suddenly affect millions of people and billions of dollars.

And maybe there wouldn't be as much risk if they were split up. If there were 30 banks, it would be easier for them to differentiate themselves in terms of risk (a few banks become low risk, high stability for the clients that prefer that style, a few become high risk, high reward for others, and everywhere in between, thus creating a diverse market). It's very difficult for this to happen when such a huge market share is being held by only a few companies who are in effect, competing directly against each other as to who can take the most risks and have the highest payoffs without it all blowing up in their face.

Yes having more banks may mean less liquidity, but if that leads to greater stability, that's a trade-off I'm willing to make. We just got over the largest financial downturn since the Great Depression. I think we should be encouraging more stability and less risk taking as a whole.

Orangutan · 2012-05-23T16:37:43.211953+00:00

I'm not saying that splitting up the banks will instantly make things better. Rather I'm saying in conjunction with other rules changes and regulations, it would create a more stable system. I'm just not comfortable with such a high percentage (and that percentage has gotten higher since the investment banks were allowed to be bought by other banks because of the repeal of Glass-Steagall) of this nation's wealth and liquidity being held by so few institutions. And then allowing those few critically important banks to then use a large part of their assets to gamble seems like too big of a risk to allow to happen. There may be some benefits to having centralized assets in terms of liquidity, but I don't think the benefits outweigh the risks.

Orangutan · 2012-05-23T08:54:06.174762-07:00

The reason I think capital requirements are important is that if all that gambling catches up with them and things do go south, those banks need to have higher capital requirements to prevent a run on that bank or others and to prevent the kind of needless suffering and government intervention I mentioned previously. I think if a company is going to be allowed to be a hybrid commercial-investment bank, it needs to be held to higher standards than banks that are independent and that means having more rules in place to prevent that bank from taking unnecessary risks.

Also, while splitting up the banks by itself won't alleviate the risks, it will diffuse them. It's a hell of a lot easier to stop a tumble if there are 30 dominoes than if there are 5.

Piernitas · 1 day

This is where we all die. Reference overload. We all feared it would happen one day and it has come to fruition. May god have mercy on our souls.

JubeltheBear · 1 day

I disagree. I think the opposite is true actually. By allowing people to say these words in a joking manner, it actually reduces their shock value and delegitimatizes them. By making words taboo, you strengthen them and give ammunition to the bigot and the bully. By coming out so strongly against a mere word, you're basically saying this word in particular gets so under my skin that you cannot handle hearing it. It must be banned. And because of that, it gives the people who are bigoted the tools to do you harm.

It's one thing to not want to say those words. That's your right; you don't have to say them. But you shouldn't condemn or look down on those people who do. They have different sensibilities than you. In fact, life become a hell of a lot better when you stop giving a damn what people think of you and you stop walking on eggshells around people for fear of "offending" them.

Orangutan · 1 day

Yours is a fair point. Assuming the bank does have to have 100% of what its depositors deposit, everyone would be recouped eventually. However, I'm not sure what the capital requirements are for these kinds of banks, but I'm fairly certain they aren't close to 100%, so it may take weeks or months for everyone to be fully repaid. In the mean time, depositors won't have any money so the government may have to step in to support them on some level and it's unlikely that the government would be repaid in full since the company no longer exists.

Not only that, if one of these multi-billion dollar companies fails, that's going to destabilize the entire banking system, especially when a lot of the business of these banks is trading securities back and forth between each other. Additionally, if one of these banks fails, it will put an enormous strain on the other banks to pick up the slack and if they're taking the same risks as the fallen bank (which they're legally allowed to do), whose to say they won't fall under the strain, creating a domino effect, runs on the banks, ect.

It just seems like a silly risk to allow to take place when the stakes are so high. And for what? So these companies can make a little more money gambling?

Orangutan · 1 day

Pretty sure the business decisions of Walmart and IBM won't directly risk the financial future of this country, unlike the decisions the banks make.

Also, a bubble isn't an ebb and flow. It's a tidal wave that crashes and builds back up. That's not sustainable.

Orangutan · 1 day

They cannot. That was not a problem at all during the recent financial crisis, and that's because banks simply can't use commercial assets in risky investment banking operations. They instead issue debt to finance investment banking assets (or use other forms of capital).

In theory this is true. However, when half of your company is dedicated to basically gambling and risk-taking, there is a very real risk to the deposits of the bank's clients. Should the investment side of the bank become overleveraged and fail, the commercial side would go down as well thus forcing the government to bail out the investment side to prevent this from happening or force the FDIC to refund the depositors deposits. Either way, it's nationalizing the risks of the company while privatizing the profits. That just doesn't sound like a fundamentally healthy system to me.

As for the shareholders, they can effect things if they can come together, but its that coming together that's the hard part. They'd basically have to agree to how much risk they're willing to take and then get enough people to buy into that system to make a solid majority. Not an easy task and in the mean time, their investments are living on borrowed time as they are more risky than what their investors feel they should be.

Orangutan · 1 day

I'm just not sure how wise it is to allow investment banking and commercial banking to coexist in the same entity. While it may have mitigated some of the effects of this crisis and can decrease some market risk, you're also basically allowing banks to gamble with the money of its depositors. That just seems rife with risk.

Also, I would love to see shareholders rise up against the risk taking, but I think that's less likely than the government getting its house in order. Shareholders don't have a lot of power, even if they can somehow get enough people together to have a vote on what their corporation is doing.

Orangutan · 1 day

Damn. You sure do like making assumptions about people don'tcha?

I'm not saying socialize the banking system. Just put caps or limits in place to prevent them from taking too big of risks.

And yes, while the banks didn't take down the economy single-handedly, they sure as hell facilitated it. Yes homebuyers deserve some of the blame and a lot probably don't deserve to be bailed out, but many were lead on by the banks, the real estate agents, and the government to believe they were making wise decisions when they obviously weren't. The government can't regulate the stupidity of individuals but it can regulate the greed of industry.

And no, I don't want a bubble to form at all. I want a healthy economy that ebbs and flows, not one that builds to critical mass and bursts.

Orangutan · 1 day

All of those are fine solutions as well. I'm not sure anyone thinks that reinstating a modified Glass-Steagall would be a magic bullet. It would have to be in tandem with other laws to work effectively or even to not make things worse.

I think passing laws are generally going to be easier to do in comparison to rewiring a majority of the regulatory complex we have in this country. This Glass-Steagall re-write is pretty low hanging fruit really. I'd much rather see the bolder solutions you suggested but I don't think those will work with the political system we have in place that rewards cowardness. In lieu of those bold solutions, I'd rather see something done than nothing which is basically what I've seen since the crisis ended.

Bladewing10

TROPHY CASE

Bladewing10

TROPHY CASE

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