Fear The Chorizo

Raimann is the type of player that can rocket up draft boards late in the game, and then wind up either becoming a great player or bust depending on what type of coaching he receives and whether his mentality/commitment to get better allows him to realize the potential his physical tools project. Would I be happy to see the Packers draft him late in Round 1 or Round 2? Sure - but I'm guessing there are lineman with a similar athletic profile needing a bit more development that aren't getting as much helium who could be mined out in the middle rounds should the Packers place a higher value on players at other positions to pick in rounds 1 and 2 in this year's draft. Regarding O-line draft prospects, one good way to get quality talent in the middle rounds is if you have scouts that can identify toolsy players who don't have the established on-field pedigree or game tape to prove they are going to be quality NFL players. Bakhtiari was a perfect example of that, as he was a 4th round pick that scouts viewed more as a development project who probably came out 1 year early.

Use those extra picks on players, not on positioning to move up. Doing so also frees up a bit more cap space this year to go get veteran receiver talent on shorter term deals without further screwing their cap situation up 2-3 years out.

I'm going to substitute OT for TE. Kelly is a FA. Nijman is a RFA (not exclusive rights) and I think he played well enough at LT that someone will make an offer that the Packers won't be able to fit under their cap. Turner is in the last year of his deal and might have to be a cap casualty if they manage to retain Nijman. And Bakh has questions surrounding his health and ability to get back on the field. Point being, Kelly and I think one of Nijman or Turner aren't back. I don't know if the Packers view Newman as having RT potential, but if they lose Nijman they will need to draft a tackle to develop. As for TE, they have Deguara who was for all intents and purposes still a rookie last year plus Dafney and Davis. I think Tonyan will be back because coming off of the injury and starting the season on the PUP there won't be a strong demand for him as a FA; I think he'll be back relatively cheap on a one-year deal. I get the viewpoint of needing more lineman, and agree - but I still feel TE is a bigger immediate roster hole than OL with the uncertainty of how soon Tonyan is back healthy with that knee. I'm basing that off an assumption that Bakh is ready for the 2022 regular season - a big assumption but frankly one the Packers have to also make considering his huge contract. Also hoping Jenkins is able to be back at some point next season. I do hope Deguara takes that next step, but I'm anticipating Lewis is gone, and they need another TE that is an effective run blocker on the roster.

I think the next month needs to unfold before we all know what blatant roster holes need filling and exactly where the Packers are picking.... Having said that, WR, TE, DL, and LB are three position groups of notable need that I'd hope the Packers focus a good chunk of their draft towards.

If you have plenty of money to put down 20% and still have a ton of reserve funds I think most should avoid PMI. Sure - but if I were a 1st time homebuyer in my current neighborhood in 2016, that would have meant needing to come up with ~$60K at closing to avoid a PMI payment of roughly $115 a month on a 3.5% mortgage. Instead we put 10% down, dealt with the nominal PMI payment for a couple years that wound up totaling $3K in extra money out the door over that time, and got rid of it after the home appreciated in value by almost $200K. Now in our neighborhood, 20% down would be roughly $100K for the same home - had we stayed in our previous home and location, there's no way our current home would be affordable to us. I'd add the caveat that part of our move coincided with my wife opting to leave the workforce for a few years to enjoy as much time with our young kids (and one on the way at the time) as possible before they got older, so we opted to not make the perfect financial move in order to improve this time as a young family - different strokes for different folks, and as long as you're happy with the reasons why various financial decisions are made it's all good!

You'd be surprise how much lower monthly PMI is if you can swing 10% down vs just 5% - I think people trying to save at least 20% down before even thinking about buying a house may actually cost themselves in the long run when home prices are increasing in markets faster than people can save. If you're in the right market you may be better served buying the house sooner than later at a great interest rate without having a full 20% down, deal with the PMI payments for a year or two and after the home appreciates in value work with your lender to try and get PMI removed based on an updated appraisal.

I might win the prize for buying a home at the wrong time - we bought our 1st home in IL spring of 2008, with a 0 down, 6% 30 year fixed - after the fact we realized we may have been one of the last people to get a $0 down mortgage because it was right as the bubble started popping. The thing we did do right is we didn't listen to our realtor/mortgage broker when they told us we could afford a home in the $500K pricerange (lol), and instead shopped at the pricepoint just over half that much. Our loan terms were terrible (rates were much higher then), but we were able to make significant extra principle payments the first few years before our kids started showing up to plow through the worst portion of that 30 yr mortgage quickly. Doing that for just a couple years helped get the percentage of our typical monthly mortgage payment dedicated to principle elevated much quicker than had we just paid our mortgage on autopilot, and a refinance 3 years in got our rate down to ~4% on a 20 year term without changing what our monthly mortgage/PMI payment was. Would have loved to eliminate all PMI during the 1st refi but the house value just wasn't there due to the crash, but at least that amount was reduced. We were thankfully able to sell our home for the same price we bought it in 2016 and used the accumulated equity for a big downpayment on our current home in MN so we no longer have a mortgage with PMI and it's at a great rate - also picked the right time to leave IL, as the home value of our 1st place is roughly the same as it was when we bought it in 2008, and our current home has basically doubled in value ~6 years after moving here. At some point home values in this market will stop skyrocketing, but I agree that another housing crash like 2008-2011 isn't going to happen - rent prices are actually outpacing home value increases in most markets, so people waiting on the sidelines are winding up having to pay more for nothing while they wait to start building property equity.

He won't be DFA'd, simply because the September roster expansions will allow for him to stick with the club and be their option when there's multiple lefty hitters due up in the 6th or 7th inning of a tight ballgame. Unless Norris turns it around significantly or if a series matchup warrants, I doubt he sees a postseason roster at this point, though.

I believe that's very much the case with Olson...and I can see plenty of room on the Tigers' 40 man roster for him. Hell, the Tigers might actually just throw him in their own pen in Detroit next year. Looking at it that way, the Brewers traded away a promising arm they probably had little chance of retaining through this offseason because of the rule 5 draft issue for someone that bolsters their MLB pen. Falls right in line with some of the other recent deadline trades involving Brewer pitching prospects (Ortiz, Medeiros, etc).

Relief pitchers are going for way more than typical this deadline, it seems. It's the bats that teams are getting pennies on the dollar for. The fact that the Brewers seemingly gave up more value for Daniel Norris than they did Eduardo Escobar is somewhat crazy to me, but the market is what it is. Reliever rentals pretty much always get seemingly better returns in terms of value than hitter rentals at the deadline....to me this year's Rizzo trade to the Yankees is the lone exception, but my gut says the Cubs got actual prospect value from the Yankees because they picked up the rest of Rizzo's salary to keep them from exceeding the luxury tax payroll threshold so they can spend like drunken sailors in free agency this offseason again.

Norris was pretty darn good as a reliever in 2020...looking at his 2021, he's had 3 blowup appearances where he's given up more than 2ER, the last time in mid June. His July BAA is 0.107 with a 0.72 WHIP across 10 appearances. If nothing else he's a good arm with experience that should help add depth to the middle of the bullpen, and he does appear to be a weapon against LH hitters.

It also hasn't been around through a legit longterm recession to know how it would perform when excess capital isn't looking for a home - if I recall crypto originated on the back end of the last big recession and has been able to fluctuate and gain public interest during a very long period of sustained economic growth - particularly US economic growth. I don't know enough about crypto to be an expert, but in the face of a longterm recession based on economic fundamentals, I'm not sure I'd want to lean too heavily on an imagined asset - making speculative plays, sure.

There will be a significant correction that goes with getting the supply chain and labor/housing markets sorted out after all the things propping them up expire. There's a record amount of job openings in the country, and unemployment is stagnated or even creeping back up - some (not all) of that undoubtedly is the excess unemployment benefits being printed out and issued. foreclosures and evictions are still not happening as far as I can tell - eventually that will be allowed to happen again, and even if it's a gradual phasing back to how things ran pre-covid that will impact the housing and rental markets. CPI going up for these items independent of interest rates/inflation and the real estate market being pretty overinflated is very similar to what happened leading up to the last significant recession around 2006-2007. Differing reasons, but a very similar pattern seems to be underway.

I've had it for about 9 months. I've only gotten about 35Mpbs not the 50 they advertise, but overall few issues with outages or dropped signal (most streaming has been smooth). There isn't a modem/router based speedtest like I can do with Spectrum, but even my 200Mbps advertised Spectrum line comes in at 150-160. You probably cant stream 4K to 3 devices, but it should handle most streaming needs depending on your circumstances. Thanks for the info! I think we're going to order and try it out for a bit to see how it does and then decide whether to return it or cancel our current service. Medicaom advertises 100Mbps for the current setup we have but tests indicate it hardly ever gets above 50 and we've had out own sporadic outages/dropped signals with it from time to time.

Question on internet streaming...anyone have that TMobile home internet service that uses 5G and a gateway device they send you? Our area west of MPLS just got this service option available, and I'm contemplating dropping my local cable internet provider and trying it out if streaming speeds are ok - seems like a decent value ($60/month).

Yep ... should probably serve as a warning to those pushing for the Brewers to trade Hader. They'd probably be lucky to get 1-2 prospects back the caliber of Diaz and Harrison, let alone a Top 25 MLB prospect like Brinson was at the time. Ya, nothing's a sure thing but Hader has a lot more value now than when Yelich did at the time. Brinson was the only "top guy" we gave up. Diaz was well regarded and Monte and Yamamoto were essentially lotteries. I'd expect at least two "top guys" in return and certainly higher level prospects overall. I'm not sure about that - at the time Yelich had more years of team control under what was a bargain contract even for his production pre-MVP than what Hader has left now via arbitration. IMO an everyday all star caliber corner OF in his prime and locked into a very team-friendly extension for 4 (or was it 5) seasons carries more value than a lockdown late inning reliever with 3 years of arbitration-based team control. Brinson headlined the trade return, for sure - but Harrison appeared to be a season behind Brinson in terms of being an everyday corner OF with pop at the major league level. Diaz was also a prospect with a solid-enough track record that he was far from a lottery ticket. Also, given the amount of minor league service time for both Harrison and Diaz at the time, I believe the Brewers needed to either trade them or add them to their 40 man roster before they were ready to avoid losing them via the rule V draft. It goes to show how hard it is to project what well-regarded prospects wind up being at the big league level.

I wouldn't go that far, yet. There is still lots of time for any one of Harrison, Brinson, and/or Diaz to figure it out and be a stud. That said, the early returns are looking good for Stearns. I mean, Yelich won an MVP and probably would have won a 2nd had he not fouled a ball off his kneecap in his first two seasons with the Brewers. Even if one of these three does figure it out and become a stud, the trade will remain highway robbery. And those prospects were already kind of long in the tooth to be considered prospects while they were with the Brewers three seasons ago.

I'm in suburbs, and I prefer any of the Moretti's locations. Their deep dish is okay, but their thin crust is why I go there. The other places that are great are Home Run Inn, and of course an old favorite that is still around, Barnaby's. Haven't tried Pequod's but I will keep it in mind. Ironic, in that I've found Pequod's to be the closest thing to Rocky Rococo's that I've found in Chicago. Pequod's sauce is a little spicier, but overall it's fairly close. My favorite deep dish in Chicago remains Art of Pizza on Ashland, just south of Belmont in Lincoln Park area. On the south side near white sox park, Ricobenes makes a good thin crust pie as well.

Many homes that aren't dumps in that $300-500K price range are often sold or have offers/inquiries before they every actually hit the market around here - even during dead of winter. I should've clarified where I live too... I'm about 25 miles south of the metro (Lakeville/Prior Lake). Probably in the last "suburb" heading south of the cities. When I moved in, my neighbor had goats. So the price range I mentioned was for here and south of here - which becomes farm land. I wouldn't touch anything close to downtown or the nicer suburbs (Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, etc...) for the prices I mentioned. For reference, brand new cookie-cutter 3-4 bed room houses on a 1/4 acre lot run $400-500k in Lakeville, which is why the cap on used is around $350k. All true - I'm equally as far out west/southwest in Saint Boni (near Waconia). Just west of me is still cornfields and goats.

Many homes that aren't dumps in that $300-500K price range are often sold or have offers/inquiries before they every actually hit the market around here - even during dead of winter.

I live in a condo community in Waukesha. Last year, I had six neighbors who had lived here fewer than four years sell their property at a gain that computes to an annual 6%-8%. I will be listing soon, and I would love for my place to have appreciated at an annual 6%. But near north Chicago isn't quite as hot with all of the restaurants shut down and all of the riots/looting last summer. I think I'm far enough away, but 6% ARR from when I bought it four years ago would be an absolute dream... it's what I would need in order to not lose money on it, given all of the repairs. 5 years ago we moved from a pretty well-to-do neighborhood north of Chicago to a far west burb outside MPLS....we wound up making a small profit on our home sale in IL and thought we bought at the right time in our current MN locale. A few weeks ago we just saw our neighbor's house and other nearby homes sell for close to 175% of what their value was back in early 2016, and our old home back in IL is currently under contract for close to 10 percent lower than what we sold it for back then. The housing market is exploding in many places, but it is stagnant to declining in others - and that's even with all the levers trying to prevent a flood of foreclosures from happening right now. Also, rent is getting crazy expensive pretty much everywhere, to the point where it's more financially sound to overpay for a house in a mortgage one can barely afford compared to a similar monthly rent payment for something crummy and you get zero equity from.

$300 as of 5:00 am ... this is just silly. These guys are going to ruin commission-free retail investing for the 99.9% of individualis who do it responsibly. Looks like they're gonna take a few hedge funds down with them. GameStop is over $340 at opening bell. Seeing stuff like this happening forces me to diversify a good chunk of retirement fund assets as far away from stocks/hedge funds/risk as possible without incurring tax burdens...if the system in place leads to these type of situations, the overall fundamentals that traditionally drive markets are completely out of whack. Right now it feels like the markets in general are priced to fit perfection based on printed money and optimism - and economic fundamentals (let along policy uncertainty) are very far from that being a reality. I'm not a market sage, but it sure feels like the best case scenario for market funds in 2021 is to largely tread water - and that makes me nervous. I'm at a spot where I'm not super close to retirement but need to start planning for it and my present risk tolerance can't really take a 30-40% haircut on my portfolio value coupled with a slower rebound than what happened in 2020 - so essentially my paycheck contributions I make at present and moving forward are still going into the more aggressive mix of mostly stock funds that I stuck with throughout last year....but a big chunk of my current plan balance got shifted into less volatile havens at the start of 2021 for the time being.

And I wonder how many people don't opt-in just because they think the immediate $200 more in their paycheck is a better deal. I think it's much more that the immediate $200 in their paycheck is needed to cover monthly bills for the vast majority of people in the low middle class and below incomewise - not that it's a better deal, but that it's necessary to put food on the table. Where I think a huge benefit could be realized is understanding that putting even a pittance towards retirement early on can really make a difference, and understanding what minimal amount people could put into a retirement account to get some sort of company match and reduce their taxable income to the point where takehome pay reductions from retirement contributions are offset by a similar reduction in payroll tax. This isn't talking $200/check, more along the lines of $25-50 a check.

Virtually everyone is preparing for massive budget cuts. This is happening at my university, it is happening behind the scenes at every corporation in America. That's going to be the driver that opens everything back up - when entire hospital systems are on the verge of collapse due to an economic shutdown originally enacted as a way to try and protect hospital systems and public health, the writing is on the wall that it isn't sustainable no matter what the health risk is. Nonexistent tax revenues emptying coffers of state and local units of government, regardless of regional political leaning, will drive economic reopening, and I think it will happen at a faster pace than even currently rosy economic predictions lay out. I think we'll avoid a depression but have a bad recession, and the rebound will be hampered by dealing with this disease and prolonged public fears of returning to some societal norms - but that will be far better than stretching shutdowns into summer and leaving the economy to start so far down that it leaves scores more people in generational poverty. Doom and gloom longterm economic forecasts are being put together much the same way initial Covid-19 modeling was done forecasting millions of dead - depicting worse than worst case scenarios and assuming no societal/economic changes would be made during an extended period of time. Those models will be shown to the same government officials who were largely responsible for driving the economic shutdown along with what projected budget shortfalls will be if these actions remain in effect, and there will be a sobering realization that this just can't continue. As for public sentiment, look what is happening in Michigan today - despite it being a midwest state that is pretty hardhit by Covid-19, especially in the Detroit area...a rapidly growing contingent of people have had enough and the fear of indefinite economic collapse on a nationwide scale outweighs the fear of a disease - no matter how infectious or potentially harmful it is to the elderly and medically vulnerable. The market is still propped up because corporations "got theirs" in terms of recent stimulus/printed assistance dollars - small businesses and hourly workers are totally skewered by the shutdown.

The market overall has an awful lot of stress trying to drag it down further - uncertainty breeds panic and unfortunately the month of April looks like nothing but uncertainty from a business standpoint right now. Last week's rally sure looks like one of those dead cat bounces temporarily propping stocks up by Washington printing $, but my gut tells me it's going to drop further back to reach lows from a couple weeks ago and likely fall further down to find a true bottom. 6.6 million+ new unemployment claims over the last week reinforces that, unfortunately. The rebound isn't going to be instant, either. The only way out of this economically without facing crippling permanent job losses and business closures is to take the next couple of weeks to develop a risk-based set of criteria that local communities can use to assess how quickly they can reopen business. That includes expanded testing programs and continued hot spot area management. The country is too large to continue with a one size fits all approach indefinitely until New York is able to reopen, for example. Hot spots will undoubtedly pop up here and there in other parts of the country, which will need to be managed as best they can - but maintaining this current strategy across the country is going to lead to much larger longterm financial and health problems than the risk this virus presents to the population. I'm not saying to greenlight MLB Opening Day for May 1 and start packing stadiums/conference centers/concert halls right away - but there's got to be an end to this current wet blanket approach to manage social interactions by restricting businesses being open. Give people some benefit of the doubt for making good decisions in the workplace and out in public in general - after all, the people that are fools about this have continued to act as fools and make bad decisions even during the past few months.