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Pecan

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  • The Pie That Was Promised
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  1. A bank stock I've been tepidly interested in for a while, before the SVB news, is KeyCorp (KEY). But then I saw this article a few days ago pointing out that they have delayed their Q1 earnings report twice, which is highly unusual for them. Here is the relevant passage: At the end of the article it says that April 20th is the new earnings reporting date. My understanding of the issue with the banks right now is that, given a decade or so of extremely low interest rates, virtually every bank has some level of exposure to these very low-yield assets. That has to be the case, doesn't it? Isn't this the water that all the banks had to drink from 2009 through 2021? At this point, how many 30-year mortgages even exist that aren't rock bottom? Mine is one because I inherited it , but there can't be too many out there at this point. And treasuries paid almost nothing for a decade. So, sure, if you're a bank it's better to do good risk management than bad risk management, but you've got to do something with your deposits. The money has to go somewhere. The thesis with SVB and I guess FRC as well is that they've been bad with managing risk, and while I don't really doubt that, I'm wondering what the math problem looks like for all of these banks that aren't necessarily bad at managing risk, but maybe are just sort of average. Keybank is supposed to be this good, solid bank run by sober Midwesterners from Cleveland - salt of the earth types no doubt. But it's really just math isn't it? It seems to me that you can be a good banker, or at least not a bad one, and you can still have a problem. So I think April 20th might be a day to pay attention to.
  2. ^Thanks. Phoenix Pictures seems like a legit company, which is good news.
  3. Has this series been optioned for TV or the big screen? Just curious.
  4. In the last couple of weeks I've finished both River of Stars and Children of Earth and Sky. I enjoyed both, but would have to say that River is a much better novel just because there's a sense of direction to it that's mostly lacking in Children. I always felt while reading it that River of Stars was going somewhere, while Children of Earth and Sky felt entirely the opposite. While enjoyable for the individual character stories, Children seems to never get to to it's main story. In fact, I don't think it has a main story line. Maybe that's fine, because, as I said, I still enjoyed reading it. But I didn't absolutely love it and I think that lack of a compelling, integrated central story is one reason why. Also, I think that time period in Eastern Europe, the Adriatic, and the Eastern Mediterranean, following the fall of Constantinople, should be prime source material for history-inspired fantasy or historical fiction. With Children, GGK kind of scraped the surface, sort of like when you go to Baskin Robbins and they give you that little taster spoon of whatever ice cream flavor you ask for. But, what I want is the full half-gallon treatment. Depth is what is missing here, I believe. Of course, to be fair, that wasn't what GGK set out to do. But someone should! As an aside, one sort of glaring observance that really stuck out to me was that when Pero finally begins painting the portrait of the Khalif, it was right around the 2/3 mark in the book, but I felt like that scene should have taken place somewhere in the first 100-150 pages. Of course, that's just my opinion. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the style of prose GGK is using in these novels, where he switches occasionally into the present tense. I don't hate it, exactly, but it feels a bit gimmicky to me. I don't know how long he's been doing that, but he does it a lot in both books. I've not read Under Heaven or Ysabel yet, so I'm not sure when this started. I don't recall that technique being present in Last Light of the Sun, which was the last novel I had read of his before about two weeks ago. I'm starting Under Heaven tonight and then will re-read Lions of Al-Rassan, which is easily my favorite of his novels. After that, I'll probably start the Fionavar books, which I've not read before.
  5. I was disappointed in how easy the Unsullied were to kill. The Unsullied are supposed to be legendary badasses.
  6. What the hell? No battle of the Whispering Wood? Are you kidding me? Everything else in this episode was great, but how can you leave out that battle?
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