Voting has begun in today’s Florida primaries, the last to be held before Super Tuesday apart from Republican caucuses in Maine on Saturday. For refusing to play by the rules of the parties’ national committees, Florida has been stripped of the 210 delegates it would normally send to the Democratic national convention, along with half of its 114 Republican delegates. All 57 of the Republican delegates will be pledged to the winning candidate, whereas the Democratic primary amounts to nothing more than an opinion poll. Polls show John McCain and Mitt Romney neck-and-neck in the Republican race, with Rudy Giuliani looking very unlikely to pull off his Florida-first strategy.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
Florida primaries thread
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1,099 Comments
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jv
sorry for 744-2 much napoleon brandy (plus losing job hasnt helped)-*sigh* my albatross for putting my head above the parapet i suppose but freedom to express yourself and allow others too as well is worth more than materialistic gain.
worth noting again that Rt. Hon. Bilbo of PB deserves a donation REGARDLESS of the reason (but it is fun to place a phantom bet)
745
Max
you are right
which is why I favored Jaundice #717 suggestion
but Centre went off the deep end at that idea
but #717 is the most practicable
If you read Centre at 582 and Jaundice at 730 implys an unoffical Bookie with
all losing punters paying William and
all winning bets to be paid by Centre to William (with no offsewt to Centre)
Do not believe Centre understands his idea and a bookies book
Oooh, some ugly stuff:
The latest clutch of worries included a $2.3 billion loss for bond insurer MBIA Inc. (MBI) for its exposure to subprime mortgage assets. There also is market speculation that ratings agencies are close to issuing new downgrades for some insurers that would block them from insuring new municipal and corporate issuance and imperil those markets.
And Standard & Poor’s on Wednesday forecast a widening array of financial institutions would ultimately face mortgage-securities losses totaling more than $265 billion. The ratings agency also downgraded or warned it might downgrade more than 8,000 mortgage investments.
“There is just a lot of ‘headline risk,’ a lot of bad news in the market,” said Tom di Galoma, head of Treasurys trading at Jefferies & Co.
….’bad news’? Did he say? Ha! That’s a friggin’ understatement!!!!
Inflation is beginning to take off in both China and the US as well as here. Can’t see how pouring all these billions of dollars into stabilising the financial markets is going to improve the longterm outlook. Looks like we got rid of the Liberals here with their inflationary attitude just in time.
The worrying thing is we have heard nothing from the US candidates about what they propose to do to stop inflation running away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/business/worldbusiness/01inflate.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin
KR , there have been rumours the bond insures may be the REAL bad ’sleeper’
because their ratings have been based on the sub prime lenders ratings
as the sub prime’s go down…there will be a lag and the bond insurers may follow
…ouch with a capital
did you follow my 752 blog mate …to keep it a simplef un donation
754
steve
It’s too late, mate. Way, way too late.
Of course not having an economy run on debt and borrowing the savings of foreigners would have been sensible, but it’s too late now. The dragon is no longer sleeping, and it’s got a very nasty streak, and it’s commin’ this way too.
Not a happy thought, but there you go, credit wasn’t meant to be easy! (As the man almost said!)
There goes Ben: $93 billion in 3 day Repo money.
That might pull up the horses of doom!
Anyway KR all we can do is batten down the hatches and I’d much prefer to go through trauma with Swan as Treasurer than Costello.
steve it could get ugly
Our Current a/c deficit:
1990 nil
1996 when Keating lost with a recesion but coming out of : 183 billion
2007 when Howard left after a once in a lietime boom : 542 billion
Libs great economic managers ?
we will oon or later pay for this debt Steve
758
steve
yep, at least they make some effort to hold down government spending, although I’d be happier not see those billions poured out in tax cuts, quite frankly. But if that was the price to pay for getting rid of the dessicated little coconut, then so be it.
We are in VERY interesting times!
May the force be with you! (As someone used to say)
KR
so who you plunging your hard earned on?
ron
the fun donation idea i totally agree with-also a donation/prediction “honour roll”
recording the ‘phantom bets’ sounds good
ps Centre is the real deal- believe you me he has “good form ” since april 07
and i dont think he actually was talking about holding any dosh -jsut “framing’ the market, thats all
They might have to resurrect the debt truck to coincide with the opening of Federal Parliament to impress upon people the legacy left by Costello.
yep , Rudd could not get away from the Lib myth of their great economic credentials and so could not on day 1 say its all of a sudden a mess and defer the 31 billion cuts into the never never
hope Howards day i election campaign day 1 bribe of 34 billion cuts which Rudd HAD to almost match with 31 bill does not become his albatross
There she goes, pulling up, for the morning glory of all that dosh getting splashed around Wall Street and every little spiv’s margin accounts. Yippeeeee! They are seeing green!
Until the arvo probably, when they all get back from a liquid lunch and start sh!tting bricks about what it all really means. They’ve got attention spans measured as a fraction of the lifespan of a midichlorian.
761
gusface
On US primaries?
I told everyone ages ago: Obama, Huck and McCain
I win if McCain gets up and I smile if Obama gets up, and if Huck ever got near the Whitehouse I’d move to a remote location with lots of ammunition!
(Hillary was such short odds she wasn’t worth punting on and Obama was,is, and still is attractive.)
Gusface , mate in his blog 582 and Jaundice’s 730 , they are talking about Centre paying out winning bets to William
(there is no offset because they say all losing bets ALSO get paid to William)
Thats what their blogs say
MY SUGGESTION
1/ blogers place a phantom bet at phantom odds on a US Pres. candidate
(via bloging it here)
2/ IF their phantom bet is a winner (ie.they select the US Pres Winner)
No donation is made to William
BUT they are awarded a “Rodent” award duly numbered in numerical order
with the number 1 “Rodent” award going to the biggest phantom bet winner
…to calculate you multiply the phantom odds by the phantom stake
to see who in phantom terms won the most phantom dolars
3/ ALL phantom losing bets are donated to William in real money
4/ The daily phantom odds can be Centrebets official odds
Sorry kr
i meant as per the “‘fun donation”
is Obama really a chance or has been suggested would he better after a bit of maturing (not him-more the usa electorate)
as i see it Hilary represents the transitional phase that the usa must go through to bring about the next stage viz the ‘idealism’ of obama,implict in this is the idea that the”neocons’ are wounded ,and like the tiger,are more dangerous.
hence the need for gradual change back to “normality’ before attempting the 2nd “camelot’ ala JFK
Ah, never bet against the Fed, as they say! LOL
Especially when they are flying over and dropping it out of helicopters.
Which reminds me of the story of the Blackhawks in Baghdad:
Money also disappeared in truckloads and by helicopter. The CPA reportedly distributed funds to contractors in bags off the back of a truck. In one notorious incident in April 2004, $1.5 billion in cash that had just been delivered by three Blackhawk helicopters was handed over to a courier in Erbil, in the Kurdish region, never to be seen again. Afterwards, no one was able to recall the courier’s name or provide a good description of him.
…and that was the tip of the iceberg!
Good ride, and good night, bludgers!
Gusface , your comments on 766 ?
Gus, Obama’s still a chance and a better one than the odds I’ve got!
As for the ‘neocons’, they are a shadow of their former selves, mostly having slunk off to cushy jobs in academia or any think tank that will have them (or like Wolfowitz, being a d!ck at the World Bank). They are spent, discredited, and desperate to hang onto any semblance of credibility they can salvage.
Huckelberry’s got Norm Podhoretz to tell him about Israel and how they love the Rapture (or whatever insane notion he’s got in his head today), and they’ve generally all wandered off to the fringes again, from whence they came.
Nup, Obama could do it now, he just has to hold enough delegates on Tuesday to stay viable for the remaining half of the country and try to bag it, delegate it by delegate. He’s a damn sight better bet than that ghoul Giuliani was, for example.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaawn.
ron
i agree and think all of us are talking at cross purposes-but to the same end
1.ive thrown in 20 smackers as per @711
2.hopefully william/jv /whoever records ‘fun donations’ as per ‘phantom bets’
3.william recieves donation regardless
4.winner/hero/heroine/whatever is whoever william determines “layed off” the best bet/s
5.we all laugh at each others incompetence/blind faith
ps william can determine odds by whatever means nesecarry
pps just love the idea of the “rodent’ award :0
yep , can you believe Obama at attractive 7/2 listed on this blog for Pres
Just against Hillary he’s gotta be 6/4
shows they’re holding a bundle on Hillary
Gusface, thx re 771
are you suggesting in your point 3/ to alter my 766 point 2/ to have winning phantom bets also to be donations to William (as well as losing phantom bets ?)
am happy either way…just wish to clarify
cheers ron
yep all “fun donations’ form the basis of ‘phantom bets” regardless of win/lose
william then determines winner based on his “book”
that way the Rt. Hon. Bilbo of PB recieves valuable donations and we all can beat our chests how good we were/how we were ripped off
ive stumped an orange roughie to get the ball rolling
MoveOn releases the result of a poll of members as to endorsing a Democratic candidate, result 70% to Obama:
“With hundreds of thousands of ballots cast across the country, for the first time in MoveOn’s history, we’ve voted together to endorse a presidential candidate in the primary. That candidate is Barack Obama.
Something big is clearly happening. A few weeks ago, MoveOn members we surveyed were split. But with John Edwards bowing out, progressives are coming together. Obama won over 70% of the vote yesterday, and he’s moving up in polls nationwide.”
Rasmussen has Obama narrowing in California, now 40% to Hillary 43%.
steve @ 754
Inflation is beginning to take off in both China and the US as well as here. Can’t see how pouring all these billions of dollars into stabilising the financial markets is going to improve the longterm outlook.
Yes, it does look like stagflation is looming in the US, if it hasn’t already arrived. Back in the 1970s when faced with this situation, then Fed Reserve chief, Paul Volcker decided to attack the inflation side by driving up interest rates. OTOH, in th early 1990s the Japanese did what Bernanke is doing, attacked the deflation aspect by lowering rates. It hasn’t been a roaring success, in fact the last 18 years have been a disaster for the Japanese.
But Bernanke may not have a choice, In the 1970s Americans had much less personal debt, as did their country. Drive up rates to 20%, as Volcker did, and a lot of them would be destitute in no time flat (as would a lot of us if this happened here).
We live in interesting times.
McCain considered switching to Democrats in 2001, from the Carpetbagger report:
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14433.html#more-14433
Centre-
are you hoping for a divorce?
What we have here folks is a Classical Narrowing type situation.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/104095/Gallup-Daily-Tracking-Election-2008.aspx
Cbet latest
President – WINNER
CLINTON, Hillary 2.40
OBAMA, Barack 3.05
MCCAIN, John 3.10
Remember, in America money doesn’t talk, it cusses.
re post 745,
Max you are absolutely right. Holding a book is going to be impractical for all the reasons you have suggested. Especially given that I will not be able to keep track of all bets offered or accepted.
My liability,the money that I as the bookmaker would have payed William would be zero or very minimal. This fact will be illustrated in the following example:
1. Clinton $50 @ 1/1 for Adam (accepted).
2. Obama $20 @ 7/2 for Jaundiced V (accepted).
3. McCain $40 @ 7/4 for Ed St J (accepted).
4. Bloomberg $10 @ 100/1 Diogenes (rejected).
5. Bloomberg $1 @ 100/1 Diogenes (accepted).
Total bets accepted = 4. Total Hold = $111.
Outcome Example: Clinton wins Presidency;
JV loses $20 pays William, ESJ loses $40 pays William, Diogenes loses $1 pays William.
The bookie wins $11 on the book therefore does not pay William. The bookie only pays William if he incurrs a loss on the book for the winning outcome. (All losers pay). As all pole bludgers can see, in this case the bookie wins regardless who wins the presidency.
Being so skilled in the art of bookmaking, I reckon I would win regardless of the result. So says Centre.
My post at 590.
“That’s if the bookie had shown a liability of course”
Ron’s post at 752.
“all winning bets to be paid by Centre to William”
There have been some commenters who have asked for an apology from other commenters.
Ron, you owe me an apology.
778
MayoFeral
That’s dead right Mayo, and it’s an interesting conundrum for new boy Ben to be faced with: Mount Olympus levels of debt, rising inflation, and siezed up credit markets.
Volker has already commented recently, and very bluntly: “The Fed has lost control”.
Ouch!
But he’s right, whacking yet another dose of vodka into the punch is not going to stave off the hangover that’s coming, even if it manages to keep the party going for a wee bit longer.
Stagflation looks like a very short odds bet.
re 780 Jen,
More betting, more booze, more flirting?????
777
Basil Fawlty
(crikey, it’s been busy over here! It was 666 only late last night)
That’s getting pretty tight, and if the actual result comes in even anywhere near that, then one can safely assume that Clinton will not do a knock out on Tsunami Tuesday.
Obama lives to scrap it out in the other half of the states, and that’s going to be one interesting tussle.
Yep Kirribilli, looks as tho Obama is getting real traction now, and the news that MoveOn is now officially endorsing him must have been a blow for the HillBillys. MoveOn has over 3 million members and enormous fundraising ability, tapping into grassroots fundraising of lots of small to moderate donors, who can keep giving.
785
for sure!
best thing I ever did.
Gotta laugh over this one:
Take Ann Coulter. In an appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity and Colmes” that’s now been widely remarked upon, she told the two hosts that if McCain was nominated, and running against Sen. Hillary Clinton, she’d vote for Clinton.
…doesn’t that make you just holler with laughter!
Boy, the nutzoids are going bannanas over McCain!
Here are the MoveOn numbers:
MoveOn.org, the influential liberal organization founded during the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton, has never endorsed a presidential candidate. Until now. The Nation’s Ari Melber reports that Sen. Barack Obama received 70 percent of the votes of MoveOn members during a vote conducted online, topping the 66 percent supermajority the group required in order to deliver its endorsement.
The actual effect political endorsements generally have on races is by no means a settled question, but the MoveOn nod could mean a lot for Obama as we head into Super Tuesday. MoveOn claims to have 1.7 million members in the Super Tuesday states alone, including more than 500,000 members just in California. That’s about 10 percent of primary voters there. The group plans to start working on Obama’s behalf “immediately,” Melber says.
Is MoveOn like our GetUp?
791
Jen
yeah, sort of, but GetUp is supposedly ‘non-aligned’ and you could hardly claim that for MoveON
Well, it had to dragged out, eh? Finally the CLinton campaign people have used the ‘n” word for Obama!
No, not THAT “n” word, but ‘nazi’!
As in:
Feb 1st, 2008 | NEW YORK — Advisers to Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton Friday complained vehemently about an Obama campaign mailer that criticizes Clinton’s health plan, with one adviser likening the mailer to “Nazis marching through Skokie, Illinois.”
…so it’s pamphlet bombing time, and this campaign will go down into trenches to slug it out.
In my 582 post I explicitly said that all losing bets pay William. I gave the example of recording a bet of 30/10 on Obama for Glen.
I explained that if Obama loses, then Glen pays $10. If Obama wins, then the bookie pays $30.
The bookie pays $30 because that represents the state of his book, which in this case is a loss of $30.
Unfotunately Mr Knowall Knownothing Ron confuses everyone by claiming that I said that the bookie pays from his winnings.
Not only do you owe me an apology Ron but everyone else you have caused confusion.
But I wont hold my breath.
Tuesday will be d-day for the candidates. The latest from Betfair:
- Clinton 2.50
- McCain 3.10 (the big mover)
- Obama 4.40
BTW Jen, stop putting ideas into my head (only kidding).
centre-
if you are having ‘ideas’ you should ring Liberal HQ’s immediately.
They need all the help they can get.
GetUp not aligned? HA!
Although to be fair it is technically true… it hasn’t really decided whether it supports the Greens or Labor yet. It is an Internet recruited site. Anybody want to hazard at a guess of the left/right ratio of the politically active on the net these days? I’d say 80:20, so it isn’t a surprise that Getup is oh so slightly biased.
But I take your point, it isn’t formally for one party or another.
LA Times also breaks for The Kid. Every little helps before Tuesday.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-dem3feb02,0,3530861.story
Centre at 795: Betfair, imho, are always off the matket pace, they were slow as wet weeks in our last big one.
The action seems to be at CBet.
President – WINNER
CLINTON, Hillary 2.50
MCCAIN, John 3.00
OBAMA, Barack 3.00
However, having said that, in the fullness of time, at the end of the day, the reality is: any price is a good price about a winner.
Centre @ 782 & Max – Reading through today’s posts – I agree about it being too hard to proceed the way we were looking at a “book” last night, full of Friday night enthusiasm and whatever else, over that period of time before November.
We can do what Max suggested – declarations of our real bets on the various agencies we take individually could be recorded and sorted at the end, with an Astute Political Punters’ Roll of Honour to be put up.
Winners, as Max suggests, to be expected to donate a proportion of their winnings to the support of this site, which is something like a religious tithe – quite appropriate for a US election.
Those who placed mock bets can place real ones instead and let us know.
To kick off, I am myself out there -for the record I have had $50 on Obama at $4.40 just now on Betfair. I undertake to donate to William 10% of my winnings (that is the standard biblical tithe rate isn’t it?) of approx $175 = $17.50.
I will no doubt be having more bets along these lines.
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