Rabbitisrich

I can't believe how little share the private labels have taken away from branded soda after all these years. There isn't much difference between colas, as far as my tastebuds can tell. It's amazing that a grocery store can place private labels next to Coke at a 25% discount, and STILL underperform.

Herzeca's argument, in JRH's link, is that the NY AG case is important because of reduced standards of proof and using collateral estoppel to piggyback on private cases. If he's right, then the AG doesn't have to develop sophisticated arguments and rigorous discovery. He just has to leverage whatever findings emerge from private cases to "seek disgorgement of the defendant's ill-gotten gains." Thanks, JRH. Normally these two are in rough agreement, but Frankel has a very different take on BAC's argument with respect to the reps and warranties claim.

The reason they are printing money is to head off deflation and keep interest rates low. It will only cause inflation if and when those excess bank reserves enter into circulation. Do a search on debt deflation cycle. Ask the Japanese if they have had hyperinflation. Anyway, here is what Bernanke recently said in response to this: With monetary policy being so accommodative now, though, it is not unreasonable to ask whether we are sowing the seeds of future inflation. A related question I sometimes hear--which bears also on the relationship between monetary and fiscal policy, is this: By buying securities, are you "monetizing the debt"--printing money for the government to use--and will that inevitably lead to higher inflation? No, that's not what is happening, and that will not happen. Monetizing the debt means using money creation as a permanent source of financing for government spending. In contrast, we are acquiring Treasury securities on the open market and only on a temporary basis, with the goal of supporting the economic recovery through lower interest rates. At the appropriate time, the Federal Reserve will gradually sell these securities or let them mature, as needed, to return its balance sheet to a more normal size. Moreover, the way the Fed finances its securities purchases is by creating reserves in the banking system. Increased bank reserves held at the Fed don't necessarily translate into more money or cash in circulation, and, indeed, broad measures of the supply of money have not grown especially quickly, on balance, over the past few years. Actually QE is an asset swap, Good job on posting that passage from bernanke's speech. He even says QE is not money printing if you read closely. Even though you said the fed was money printing. Or not yet, at least. I like this FT article distinguishing between "today money" and "tomorrow money": http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2012/10/02/1187841/dont-call-it-money-printing-rubiks-cube-edition/

$6? Wow, glad I'm not living in that part of California. The refinery is back online now, so soon you'll have your answer. Will prices decline in the weeks ahead? Here is some more information for you: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/10/07/calif-gas-prices-hit-all-time-high/1617801/ This is a good article summarizing the supply disruptions: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2012/10/california_gas.html There isn't much evidence that California demand has exploded. For example, estimates of vehicle miles traveled on California highways ranged from flat to slightly over 1% growth YOY.

I've been wondering about these linked products as well. I looked for some big protective covenant that would protect WFC's interest, but these products seem relatively straight forward. Wachovia used to screw over small investors with linked securities that would take from principal to pay for unwinding hedges in the case of early termination.

Yeah, but his MBIA position implies that he holds a more nuanced view of BAC's litigation risks. MBIA was a huge position in his income fund the last time that I checked.

19 miles? There's meticulous, and there's a waste of time. This is something that can happen with loosely consolidated conglomeration in a high regulation regime.

The economist article may overstate the points of the study on which it is based. The authors identified explanatory factors by comparing against a model portfolio reweighted on a monthly basis, before transaction fees, with no adjustments for transaction size to market or liquidity. The idealized Buffett portfolio, taken from 13-Fs, is maintained at fixed weights on a monthly basis, and then updated quarterly. So, if a stock outperforms the portfolio between 13-Fs, it's treated as if it were "sold" until the holding reaches the prior quarter weight. If, in the next 13-F, the stock hasn't been sold at all, then it's treated as if it were "bought" again*. *As far as I understand. Someone else might have a different interpretation of "Buffett's Alpha" by Frazzini, Kabiller, and Pedersen. In any case, some of the comments on the Economist article were upset by the implication that Buffett doesn't have "alpha", but explaining someone's performance isn't the same as saying that they have no skill, at least not in the colloquial sense.

Thanks. I'll check out Plan's blog. I actually retraced Burry's posts a while back thanks to Tariq's blog: http://streetcapitalist.com/2010/03/24/learning-from-michael-burry/ I then spent some time and went over every single one of his posts on Silicon Investor, took me a few days. In case you're wondering, yeah, I'm a big Mike Burry fan. :) Ah, sorry, it was probably Tariq Ali's blog that covered Burry's letters.

Thanks for the link. You might also want to check out Plan Maestro's site for posts about Burry's posts on Silicon Investor. You can see his maturation process leading up to the Nasdaq crash.

Rereading the article, Ericopoly is likely right. In the last conference call, Moynihan or Thompson estimated that the Basel III npr would have a negative 0.15% effect on the Tier 1 common ratio, but he didn't want to commit to a number before the finalized rulings come out.

Unbelievable!

Chanos is saying that Dell has plowed billions into acquisitions to end up with the same level of earnings where it was before (which looking back is basically true) - which implies that from an earnings standpoint its high M&A spend is almost equivalent to huge hidden maintenance capex rather than growth capex as its legacy business gets less and less profitable. If it needed the same level of M&A to maintain the same results forever he might have a point. I am inclined to take the other side of that view, but it's worth thinking about. Chanos has a complicated method of expressing that the PC business' contribution to earnings is declining. It also speaks to the problem of trying to normalize FCF for an innovation business. Maintenance/investment capex is difficult to delineate, but that sword swings both ways...

http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/ViewNews.aspx?id=57646&terms=@ReutersTopicCodes+CONTAINS+%27ANV%27

http://www.economist.com/node/21563291

Two things. 1. Are you sure about your facts? a. When did he say $23Bn and b. has he only spent 5Bn thus far? 2. What is your benchmark for NOT "badly failed to meet"? That may have been an extrapolation from estimated $23 billion in non-core assets: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/99bf9bc2-7bee-11e1-af2b-00144feab49a.html

Gay people are born gays..they just realize/reveal it late because of social pressure..A straight person just doesn't become gay because it is allowed. Actually there is much debate about this. Pavlovian Conditioning in my view proves that homosexuality can actually be introduced into any person's sexual preference, think Jails or stranded islands. I think the scientific community's attempt to rationalize that people are born gay is totally baseless. Sorry for being grotesque, but acts of self-love are not romances of the hand. I suspect that people in prison are not actually attracted to other men... though who knows...

Adam and Eve were alone. The importance of their individual decision to have children was essential to the growth rate of the human race because they were the human race. Once you start getting into groups in different ecosystems, the Adam and Eve analogy becomes inapplicable.

Forget closed-minded, it's just not a very useful thought experiment. You are ignoring the specificity of that situation, and imputing your conclusion to reproduction in the real world. Is the real ecosystem a series of Adam's and Eve's deciding to reproduce?

But my point is that... Sorry, wrong thread. It's probably more a sign that bargains have been bargains long enough for people to get their desired allocation, and that NEW bargains are a bit more scarce.

It just comes down to preference in the end. That was my point with Enoch1. I couldn't understand how the "God" universe changes the mechanics of how people make decisions. It just adds another factor, rather than imbuing "objectiveness" into morality, whatever that means.

That's because you are focused on direct effects. A starting point of Adam and Eve makes that direct effect very important. What about the a small group that has just been kicked out of the garden? Will propogation always be supported by each person having children simply because they can? Can you imagine scenarios where overall birthing potential is improved by some people refraining from giving birth and focusing resources elsewhere? This is not a defense of homosexuality as being "natural" but rather to point out that the "two dudes" argument is very narrow in approach.

I wonder whether there would be a positive change in lifetime productivity of any child they adopt. Probably, and probably upwards.

Why the ad hominems? Was there something specific about my response with which you disagreed?

I am not singling you out, I think all of those millions and billions are bigots too. Interesting. Infertile women are allowed to marry. Eric, Perhaps I missed a previous explanation, and perhaps this question is ignorant....but how could the human race expand had it begun with either two dudes or two women? Yes using the example of an infertile woman is a neat little trick, but in all seriousness, how is homosexuality inherently natural if said act cannot inherently reproduce? An infertile woman was inherently created to reproduce.... That's an error of extrapolating aggregate birth/death rates from individual cases. For example, homosexuality may be supportive of family fertility despite its effect on an individual person's fertility. If there are limited available resources, then 2 aunts to one child may be more adaptive than 2 moms to 2 children. There are other what ifs, but the point is that you can't assume maladaption by looking only at direct effects of not reproducing. Also, defining natural by the quality of contributing to fertility is an idiosyncratic use of the term. That would imply that all extinct species were unnatural and that in vitro fertilization procedures are natural.