btq96r

Two centuries later, we're still spinning around in circles it seems.

Dude, c'mon...the apples to oranges of a dedicated everyday security guard on the payroll vs. police answering a call is so far and wide it's not even a comparison.

No, they shouldn't. They didn't pay taxes just to the school then and there for the kid they removed from it in favor of a private education. This is a collective thing. A while back, we decided schools should be publicly funded for everyone...same as roads, libraries, police and fire departments, and anything else along that train of thought. Every parent with a kid in private school knew the way this works, and still elected for the private school. I've got no issues with the way that decision came about because I recognize the value of a private education over a public one in a lot of cases. But that doesn't absolve them from the collective contribution to public education. A better way to look at this: schools are a way to ensure we have an economy a generation later. Everyone who is holding a job today and producing something deemed of economic value to society is doing so because of a school. Yes, homeschooling is responsible for some, private/religious schooling for more, but the overwhelming majority learned to read, write, do math, understand science, and history in a public school paid for by collective tax revenue. This isn't a formulation that can be traced to whomever claims a child as a dependent on taxes...it's a whole effort. We don't keep an economic foundation as a country without a public school system. I'm not one to decide on how people spend their disposable income. But if these private schools want security, it needs to come from their own coffers, not public ones. It'll be up to the parents to decide if the added cost of security is the make or break line in the household budget. I'm guessing it will be minimal...even in the scenario where someone is working 3 jobs to send their kid to a private school. I just saw on Channel 5 one school started someone for security Thursday and the plan is to raise tuition and after school activity fees to pay for it. There is a lot of debate to have on how much we spend for education, how it's used, and what it gets us. But this debate I'm taling about is a binary choice of whether or not to use public funds for private institution security.

Because you chose the parochial education for your kids. That's your prerogative. I'm open to vouchers for kids who couldn't afford tuition to a place like TCS, but this is giving money to a community that doesn't need it. At TCS, tuition for their largest attendance group (K-4) is $16.300 per their website; it's clearly not appropriate for the government to give them the same levels of support public schools get when they have parents with means supporting their institution. Believe me, I'll be happy if private schools source private security. This isn't me thinking those kids don't deserve the protection, it's me thinking tax payments shouldn't cover it. The parents chose to remove their children to a supposedly better educational experience...the cost burden they assume doesn't stop at tuition and fees.

That and Bill Lee is open to grant funding for private school security. I'm all for private schools having guards, but they should fund it like they do all their other operating items. Coupled with a red flag law that's just meant to turn down the heat and we'll have taken some steps backwards.

A death in training is every bit as tragic as a loss in combat. Hoping these families find their way to gentler days.

For a moment I thought it was Bass Reeves, but realized it didn't have his epic mustache.

Some folks are going to take this in a bad way...on either side. I would just ask you to consider the following statement and my reasoning. The guns are why we have some of problems at the level we do, and that's a risk we're assuming as a society for the protection they offer. We can talk about all the other things that can kill, but for the same reasons we want them for our own safety, guns are just efficient for those who want to do evil. Put a modern gun into the hands of someone who is set to attack society, the potential for what we saw Monday is very easy to manufacture. A knife or something else common but deadly can't come close to the ability a gun has to create death at scale. And even some the worst people out there can't or won't participate in arm reach intimacy with violence; they need the simplicity and detachment using a gun brings as a stand off tool to perpetrate the act. Guns may not be the root of problem, but they're the tool of choice for those who embody the problem. American society has enabled that. It's the danger of risk in a cultural philosophy that wants the population to be able to engage a corrupt and hostile government with open force. I'll mourn for those lost in this shooting and every shooting. The random brutality of the is why they are taken is a tragedy with each one gone. I'll even still say the risk we've seen and what may come isn't worth forcibly disarming the population to the point of disadvantage against our government's strength in force. But I won't shy away from acknowledging guns enabled what we saw because we've made them easy to get for our own protection of liberty.

That will just be used as evidence the current system isn't sufficient to keep guns away from the mentally ill, and more control/restrictions are needed. Not sure how comfortable I am with mental health professionals entering patient data into a federal and/or state system. Especially as it might stop people from getting help when they need it, even if they aren't the type that would do this. Where do we draw the line at personal privacy and public safety?

I know the mother of one of the kids killed. Not well, but I know her. I can't even begin to think of how the life for her and her family life is irrevocably changed. It's just an ineffable amount of sorrow that I hope time can heal. Some can berate the Trans community by thinking the shooter was representative of their ilk, but that's as shortsighted as those who would lump all gun owners into a mischaracterization so wide and far. You don't have to accept or appreciate their lifestyle to acknowledge yesterday was an evil act needing no further characterization. Those officers showed what speed in a situation like this can do. A lone shooter is a threat that can be neutralized quickly enough by a few men ready to be brave when the moment calls. I'm thankful the rest of the kids and staff at that school had responders who were found to measure up to all we could have asked while answering that call. This spreads a lot wider than that one school. I can't begin to imagine how many kids and parents had an emotional day as the perception of normal was shattered for a great many across the area. May we never have a day like yesterday again.

The easiest thing to assume usually wins out absent facts. We all wanted to believe it was an unlocked door since that's a easy fix. Putting bulletproof glass in school entrances is less comforting to the human mind (and budget).

Wish I had something more than a platitude to offer. Have a co-worker with kids in the school across the street. Would wonder where his head is today, hoping he and the wife get kids home sooner rather than later.

Very commonly, we talk about if a homeowner is "underwater" with the value of their home against the mortgage they're in. I think we're going to get more familiar with talking about the owner of that loan being underwater with the return on capital. The banks and Fed have nobody to blame but themselves for this. The ramifications from about a decade of free money orgy via ZIRP is long overdue. It's going to be turbulent as we've seen over the last few weeks, but it's time to take the crap you can't avoid after a night out at the steakhouse.

Also worth considering are questions about timeline for getting rid of them through a sale, and if local sales are the only option. I get you don't want your friend to get ripped off, but if holding a lot of firearms and dealing with all the unfamiliar quirks around selling and shipping aren't appealing....this may be more a fire sale compared to retail one price point wise.

AK-47s you say?

FDIC can borrow from the government, issue debt, and likely have money appropriated by Congress. It's not easy to tap their cash reserves, but it became a conversation during the 2008 GFC. That was one of the drivers behind the Fed and Treasury marrying the banks up making Too Big(ger) to Fail. It saved the question of how far the FDIC could stretch from becoming an operational problem.

I was watching them back then as well. The risk they took going independent and relying only on subscription and YouTube/Spotify revenue was pretty substantial. But their work is worth rewarding. I don't always agree with their conclusions, but their way of approaching a story is refreshing.

Krystal and Saggar do a magnificent job of breaking down things to not just explain it to regular folks, but how it impacts regular folks. They have been all over this. Their show on Monday was fantastic, even for folks like me who still like the wonky details. I'm really hoping their independent journalism and populist mindsets catch on.

Frank was on the board of the other bank that went under late last week, Signature Bank. Not sure about any Chinese firms at either, but wouldn't shock me. They have to bank somewhere for their interests in the US. https://apnews.com/article/signature-bank-fdic-barney-frank-silicon-valley-6ad86262d9945675a42d735b66ace4f2 Frank said this was meant as a warning to crypto banks. While I'm guessing the Fed and Treasury weren't sad to see a bank that changed its focus to crypto customers go under, this doesn't appear to be anything besides a normal bank run. It seems Bitcoin does not "fix this" just yet. The FDIC also guaranteed deposits in excess of $250k, once again changing that limit to infinity. No tax dollars at work...yet. The FDIC funding can still cover things since the assets of the bank aren't junk.

This was the only real good part here. The shareholders of SVB will be ran down to zero in their equity, and the management team is out of a job. To be sure, it was only the size of SVB that let this consequence be applied. JP Morgan or Bank of America would get the '08 treatment again if this was a problem they encountered. So, it's easy to think of this as compared to 2008, but this is more like all the smaller banks that failed during that time, not the big institutions that were given large grants from the Treasury/Fed and paired up in arraigned marriages that made them even bigger. SVB just got a lot of attention due to the VC money tied up in the accounts. It was more a business to business bank than a community one in essence. There is a lot of angst over how the CEO and others had stock sale transactions occur very recently, and while it seems a good bit of that was on a drawn out plan (it's how executives with performance based comp cash flow their lives, and it is tax season), it makes sense if they felt the winds blowing and took some money to their personal accounts on the way down. While I'm only so sympathetic, that CEO, CFO, and likely a few others from the BOD aren't going to be done with the mess for a while, and will likely be in some legal muck along the way. So, without a corporation to fob those expenses off onto, they need to pay for it out of pocket and have some cash to float themselves.

The key word is trading here. The real number value of the mortgage payments are still what it was closed at. But in 2020 and 2021, a lot of people buying homes did so under some very favorable interest rates, and more people were on their heels to refinance. That's a lot of money locked in a the low end of the spectrum, the value of that money having gone for a roller-coaster ride in three years. With inflation eating away the value of the dollar and interest rates going up, holding those assets is at best money in a tar pit, and at worst, seen as a loss when adjusted in real terms (ie: after inflation). So, if a financial organization wants to get them off the books and free up capital for better use, they sell them at a discount to entice a buyer and move on. After all, who would buy a mortgage no matter how secure returning 3% when you can buy a T-Bill that is the safest investment on the planet returning 5%, or a corporate bond above that even. They're doing this because money isn't essentially free to borrow anymore, so they have to gin it up from their own assets and returns. Think of it as selling a gun you bought during a Republican administration that was cheap, but you're not using it anymore, to get money that partially funds your next purchase when a Democrat is in the White House, and guns are more expensive. That's about as TGO friendly a parable I can use for this situation, but it's a bit imperfect. Last year the big deal was inflation gut punching the consumer. For at least now, the big deal is inflation gut punching the financial institutions. Corporate bonds are probably on deck for valuation hits.

Oh, I've got some four letter word laced opinions on this whole mess. How the risk of rising interest rates wasn't considered is the first problem. For all the issues people have with Jerome Powell (JPow), he speaks a concise English on macroeconomic topics. These rate hikes were neither a surprise nor at a pace people didn't know was coming. I guess risk management is a nag when it lowers EBITDA and EPS come bonus time. Next, while I realize the need to stop a contagion of bank runs at the speed of wire transfers...we've pretty much set the standard that FDIC insurance limits are now...well, all deposits in the country. They can say taxpayers aren't on the hook...what they really mean is not yet. After the FDIC piggy bank from funding of the program by banks runs dry, they tap the "full faith and credit of the government of the United States of America." Congrats, America. We all in on making sure all the depositors of SVB are safe. While we did save the paycheck flow for everyday people (I have a friend who's company banks with SVB), we also prolonged the stupid companies keeping up operations. I get we only had the weekend, but I'm not jazzed about saving the 7th app based scooter rental company just because their account was in a bank connected to a lot of very rich people with their VC money tied to those companies as angel investors. The cash outlay here will be minimal at the end; SVB had a liquidity problem, not a toxic asset problem. But the bar has been set. Buckle up...this is the intro, not the story. One of Warren Buffet's often used aphorisms is about to play out and we're about to see some people hanging brain. It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who has been swimming naked. So many businesses, plus their CFOs are not ready for this lesson. It's going to be painful. Like learning the lessons all over in Iraq, just with red dollar signs and numbers instead of flag draped caskets. $250k isn't enough for companies. It works for everyday people, but not business accounts. It used to be $100k, then we raised it to $250k, during the '08 GFC, so, it's just a number we make up after getting some data points. We need to raise it for businesses so there are reasonable operating parameters and we don't have to backstop all of the cashflow accounts and lockboxes across the financial sector. Then we can let bad companies fail through their own financial mismanagement. That's a feature, not a bug. Conservative/Libertarians got a gut check this weekend, and a lot were found wanting over on Financial Twitter....looking at you, David Sacks (yup, real name).

Only at Sub-MOA.

Glad we're paying for a Space Force to watch the Air Force from whence it came shoot down UFOs.