Realizing how badly the Dick Vermeil years really screwed up our program, it is now obvious that we are playing catchup. The team gave away top 50 picks almost every year for "has been's," "never were's," and let's not forget for Vermeil himself. We had some good years, but the team was managed with a short term outlook in mind.
Now we find ourselves in a new era. One where we must play catch up for all of the top 50 picks we lost in the Vermeil years. Last year we had three: Dorsey, Albert, and Flowers. Three excellent fixtures for the future. Looking at the other Top 50 picks still on our team from before that, and the list is pretty slim. We have DJ, Hali, LJ, Bowe, and after that you have to fall all the way down to Tony Gonzalez. Great teams have great high-end talent. The Chiefs have not done a good enough job at getting 2-3 picks in that Top 50 every single season.
If you have 10 year pro's at every one of those picks, and you get two picks in the Top 50 every year, that means you will end up with 20 players in the Top 50. Assuming those are all starters, you have filled 20 of 22 starters of every roster with Top 50 talent.
The Chiefs are short on talent, as you can see above we only have eight, and that counts the three from last year. Of the picks I stated above, Vermeil netted two of those eight in five years. Herm Edwards netted five in three years. Vermeil should have netted 9-11 and Herm 5-7. Now we see why we are behind, yes?
This season, Pioli has only one (#3 overall) after trading for Matt Cassel. For this draft to be a success, it is necessary to convert that #3 pick into two picks in the Top 50 this year and add another one close to the Top 50 next season. If we can package Tony Gonzalez and make it three this year and another next year, then that is great.
We have added a good QB to move forward with in Matt Cassell, and a few great hole fillers with intangibles in Mike Vrabel, Zach Thomas, and Bobby Engram. Now we need young, hungry Top 50 talent. I believe Pioli sees the value in this, and I think it is in our best interest to make it happen. Either Denver or Philadelphia could make this happen. Philadelphia has shown interest by interviewing Top 5 offensive tackles in the past couple of weeks. Adding Tony Gonzalez to their receiving corps could give them a legitimate run at the NFC east title this season which would satisfy the fans, Tony Gonzalez, and Donovan McNabb. The Chiefs could get both first round picks and their second rounder for Tony G.
If not, Denver really wants Matt Sanchez, and they are drafting 12 and 18. He won't be there at 12. I wouldn't trade Tony G within the division, but I'd swap picks within it.
We have options, and we're desperate for young high-end talent. I believe Pioli sees this, and all the mocks will be wrong when the Chiefs have dropped below #3 and Curry or Monroe won't be an option. Anyone who thinks that the Chiefs should spend their ONLY Top 50 picks on an ILB (Curry) is insane.
I don't believe Pioli is insane, and I believe he is making the same observations that I am. I'm excited about this draft and management that I trust to make this decision the right way (unlike Vermeil and Carl).
Friday, April 17, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Blind Leading the Blind
Today, I was looking around for investment blogs to try to get information on the markets right now. I ran across Lloyd's Investment Blog, which has takes on everything from the current recession to the correlation between player salaries and wins in Major League Baseball. It is definitely worth checking out.
I just read an interesting post of his entitled Blind Men and Elephant: on the Urgency of Asset Price Reflation. He had an interesting take on the fact that we should have acted back in 2007 (the onset of the subprime fallout and home price deflation) to stabilize asset valuations and index our Federal Reserve policy based on a stock market target (say in the S&P). This would enact a Monetary Policy that would act based on indexed economic conditions as opposed to presumed market conditions. He properly makes the parallels between the lead-in to this recession and into the Great Depression as being caused by over-indebtedness and takes it a step further to deflation. There are several analysts in the financial sector who have properly diagnosed the problems as Lloyd has, and even have created cycles which note a 60 year cycle that goes around from Peak Debt to Peak Cash and back again. We're back again.
This was one of the better Keynesian arguments I have read, as it forced the Federal Reserve to act in a way that has an index of some sort as opposed to just blindly driving the Federal Funds Rate into the ground. As much as I have respected Lloyds argument, I do have to disagree with him on the following arguments:
1) How do you value the target for the S&P or the DJIA or whatever? When the DJIA hit 14,000, would the Bush Administration & Bernacke have redrawn the line based on a new era in wealth and prosperity, even though it was largely driven by exccessive indebtedness? If it is indexed to inflation, couldn't we all determine that inflation is an unnecessary evil through effective currency stabilization and there is no need to ever increase that target? Which leads to my next point....
2) Where is the government debt at in all of this? Deflation is necessary when prices are at unsustainable levels, so what is the government deficit going to do to prolong the recession? In 3-5 years, once unemployment starts to show some slight signs of recovery, the currency is going to drop. This is going to cause massive inflation, our standard of living to drop, our assets to lose value again as the currency is worth less, and unemployment to begin once more. You cannot solve over-indebtedness with more-indebtedness, cannot solve devaluing asset prices by devaluing the only asset that everyone in this nation has: cash.
We need a nation that goes back to working and producing to solve their problems and stop waiting to see what the President, Treasury Department, or the Federal Reserve chief is going to do. When our policy makers realize that the only solution to economic woes is production and not debt and that comes from the private and not public sector, we will begin to dig out of this problem again.
These policies drove us into a Great Depression instead of simply a Bad Recession. WWII lifted the U.S. out of the Great Depression because we began producing guns, trucks, bombs, planes, boats, and food necessary to go fight a war. We need to start producing the goods necessary to get us out of this recession, and begin our war with the economy.
The day that happens, the sun will start to shine on the American Superpower again. Unfortunately, until the government stops meddling in overseas affairs, giving away our sovereignty to foreign nations and organizations, and printing invisible money to give people invisible wealth and financial irresponsibility, we will continue down this road to ruin. Unfortunately, the Bush and Obama administrations have done nothing to warrant that faith, and the Republicans leading up to 2012 do not seem like the type to want the government to have less power (Romney, Palin, Jindal, and others). It's going to be tough to come out of this any time soon.
I just read an interesting post of his entitled Blind Men and Elephant: on the Urgency of Asset Price Reflation. He had an interesting take on the fact that we should have acted back in 2007 (the onset of the subprime fallout and home price deflation) to stabilize asset valuations and index our Federal Reserve policy based on a stock market target (say in the S&P). This would enact a Monetary Policy that would act based on indexed economic conditions as opposed to presumed market conditions. He properly makes the parallels between the lead-in to this recession and into the Great Depression as being caused by over-indebtedness and takes it a step further to deflation. There are several analysts in the financial sector who have properly diagnosed the problems as Lloyd has, and even have created cycles which note a 60 year cycle that goes around from Peak Debt to Peak Cash and back again. We're back again.
This was one of the better Keynesian arguments I have read, as it forced the Federal Reserve to act in a way that has an index of some sort as opposed to just blindly driving the Federal Funds Rate into the ground. As much as I have respected Lloyds argument, I do have to disagree with him on the following arguments:
1) How do you value the target for the S&P or the DJIA or whatever? When the DJIA hit 14,000, would the Bush Administration & Bernacke have redrawn the line based on a new era in wealth and prosperity, even though it was largely driven by exccessive indebtedness? If it is indexed to inflation, couldn't we all determine that inflation is an unnecessary evil through effective currency stabilization and there is no need to ever increase that target? Which leads to my next point....
2) Where is the government debt at in all of this? Deflation is necessary when prices are at unsustainable levels, so what is the government deficit going to do to prolong the recession? In 3-5 years, once unemployment starts to show some slight signs of recovery, the currency is going to drop. This is going to cause massive inflation, our standard of living to drop, our assets to lose value again as the currency is worth less, and unemployment to begin once more. You cannot solve over-indebtedness with more-indebtedness, cannot solve devaluing asset prices by devaluing the only asset that everyone in this nation has: cash.
We need a nation that goes back to working and producing to solve their problems and stop waiting to see what the President, Treasury Department, or the Federal Reserve chief is going to do. When our policy makers realize that the only solution to economic woes is production and not debt and that comes from the private and not public sector, we will begin to dig out of this problem again.
These policies drove us into a Great Depression instead of simply a Bad Recession. WWII lifted the U.S. out of the Great Depression because we began producing guns, trucks, bombs, planes, boats, and food necessary to go fight a war. We need to start producing the goods necessary to get us out of this recession, and begin our war with the economy.
The day that happens, the sun will start to shine on the American Superpower again. Unfortunately, until the government stops meddling in overseas affairs, giving away our sovereignty to foreign nations and organizations, and printing invisible money to give people invisible wealth and financial irresponsibility, we will continue down this road to ruin. Unfortunately, the Bush and Obama administrations have done nothing to warrant that faith, and the Republicans leading up to 2012 do not seem like the type to want the government to have less power (Romney, Palin, Jindal, and others). It's going to be tough to come out of this any time soon.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Irony of the Medium
Bill O'Reilly was on Letterman last week, and in watching the interview it always impresses me the differences in public perception depending on your particular method of communication. Unfortunately, this really does become a liberal versus conservative discussion, but because of the sources more than ideology.
Taking O'Reilly and Letterman as examples, are we able to make a case for which one is the most knowledgeable about world affairs or which one cares about the common man the most? What about who is the funniest?
As President Obama has proved, anyone can read something written for them from a teleprompter (sometimes it is written for someone else and they read it by mistake). O'Reilly discusses talking points established for him by a writing staff behind the scenes, Letterman makes jokes written for him the same way. O'Reilly "cares" about you enough to give you the "facts" given his particular slant, Letterman makes jokes about "facts" given his political slant. Letterman has jokes written for him and he is funny, yet O'Reilly does not have jokes written for him.
Honestly, I'm not an O'Reilly fan per se. As far as news networks go, I will watch FoxNews because though I hate Karl Rove, they are represented by the fewest officials in the government who have screwed up this country. O'Reilly is not terrible, I was a Huckabee fan, and if I watch TV commentary it comes from Glenn Beck. Though Beck is a weak libertarian, he is the closest thing we have in the mainstream media. Every time I have to watch Paul Begala on CNN or have to suffer through Olbermann on MSNBC, I beg my wife to go pull a gun out of the closet and put me out of my misery.
We rely on a lot of trust in life in these matters. I trust my gut. My gut tells me that the best that I (or anyone else can do) is simply the best for ourselves and our family and friends. I can provide for myself and my family, and I want society to do the same. Neither political party is helping me with this right now, and the funny media and the actual media are doing very little to show me that they will give up slant to want that for me and everyone else.
O'Reilly is not a Conservative as he does not believe in small government, neither does Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and the like. They just want big government their way. America seems just as unable to decipher the genuineness of these men's conservatism any more than I can distinguish whether or not Letterman, Leno, O'Brien, Stewart, or EVEN Colbert are funny without writers assisting them.
Let's hope one day it gets to be easier for us to truly know the sources of our worldview.
Taking O'Reilly and Letterman as examples, are we able to make a case for which one is the most knowledgeable about world affairs or which one cares about the common man the most? What about who is the funniest?
As President Obama has proved, anyone can read something written for them from a teleprompter (sometimes it is written for someone else and they read it by mistake). O'Reilly discusses talking points established for him by a writing staff behind the scenes, Letterman makes jokes written for him the same way. O'Reilly "cares" about you enough to give you the "facts" given his particular slant, Letterman makes jokes about "facts" given his political slant. Letterman has jokes written for him and he is funny, yet O'Reilly does not have jokes written for him.
Honestly, I'm not an O'Reilly fan per se. As far as news networks go, I will watch FoxNews because though I hate Karl Rove, they are represented by the fewest officials in the government who have screwed up this country. O'Reilly is not terrible, I was a Huckabee fan, and if I watch TV commentary it comes from Glenn Beck. Though Beck is a weak libertarian, he is the closest thing we have in the mainstream media. Every time I have to watch Paul Begala on CNN or have to suffer through Olbermann on MSNBC, I beg my wife to go pull a gun out of the closet and put me out of my misery.
We rely on a lot of trust in life in these matters. I trust my gut. My gut tells me that the best that I (or anyone else can do) is simply the best for ourselves and our family and friends. I can provide for myself and my family, and I want society to do the same. Neither political party is helping me with this right now, and the funny media and the actual media are doing very little to show me that they will give up slant to want that for me and everyone else.
O'Reilly is not a Conservative as he does not believe in small government, neither does Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and the like. They just want big government their way. America seems just as unable to decipher the genuineness of these men's conservatism any more than I can distinguish whether or not Letterman, Leno, O'Brien, Stewart, or EVEN Colbert are funny without writers assisting them.
Let's hope one day it gets to be easier for us to truly know the sources of our worldview.
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