Parsad

I second that. On the other hand, W had ethics but made many poor decisions. I believe O's ethics are on par with Clinton's, but unlike Clinton, his only talent is drumming up the masses. He is not a policy guy, just a community organizer writ large. Between the three, I'll go with Clinton. W nearly took down the entire financial system...he can stick his ethics where the sun don't shine. The U.S. also was the most hated country in the world for the better part of his tenure, and there was probably more crony capitalism under his watch then the previous 100 years combined. You can dislike Obama all you want for his policies, but the U.S.' global stature is back where it was under Clinton or Reagan. And the biggest problem for the last 40 years has been U.S. dependence on foreign oil...whether anyone likes it or not, and you can debate all you want around the exact reasons (economic, innovation), that dependence is decreasing under Obama's watch. W couldn't even do it after invading Iraq and taking over the oil infrastructure there. You guys were all still driving 9 mpg Hummers then! I've heard five speeches now from the conventions...Ryan, Romney, Romney's wife, Michelle Obama and Clinton. Only one, Clinton, had a speech that talked about respect for members of the other party and trying to work with them. I hope Obama takes that turn, because that's what he needs to do. Cheers!

If you have not seen Clinton's Democratic Convention Speech tonight, here it is. Master orator who can talk circles around the current candidates and especially their vice-presidential candidates. Cheers!

Thanks DCG...very good article! Cheers!

Damn it Olmstead! I thought it was something significant. The guy will probably get hired by Chippendales! Cheers!

Good article at SA about BAC. Cheers! http://seekingalpha.com/article/847721-bank-of-america-the-low-interest-rate-conundrum?source=yahoo

Hi Vish, Hopefully Paul will end up using something like that, since the three different questions I have don't change often. Cheers!

Put it this way...I just can't see anyone making even a small dent in Google Adsense's market share for the next ten years. They have almost 80% market share of the top 1M websites, but they only have about 28% market share of the top 1000 sites. The bigger you are, the more independent you can be of Google Adsense. But I don't see more top 1000 sites...it is what it is...but I do see millions of smaller sites being added regularly over the next decade. And no one can take those away from them. Cheers!

I'd be interested in the answer to this too. I know for a fact that for adwords (Google's search based ads), an advertiser definitely has to pay per click (sometimes big big bucks...). I wonder how adsense works especially for revenue sharing. Is it per impression, per click, per conversion? All of the above. You get paid based on viewership (impressions), clicks and conversions. But you have no idea whatsoever what the ad rates are, if you are getting paid relative amounts for similiar ads, which or why clicks or conversions are eliminated, or virtually anything else about how you are compensated. I've seen days and months were impressions were identical to other months, and number of clicks were significantly higher, yet somehow my revenues were half of what they normally would be. There is no way Google's rates would have been cut in half. These were non-high season periods as well...so not Memorial Day, July 4th Week, Thanksgiving or Christmas. The one consistency at the Google Adsense in Your City was that every single publisher I spoke to thought that Google's publisher support, disclosure and transparency were non-existent. They control everything and you either deal with them solely on their terms, or you don't have to deal with them at all. Unfortunately, their competition is about as impotent as publishers...doesn't matter whether it's Clickbank, adBrite or whoever else...Google Adsense is king! Presently, the way online advertising is structured, I believe Google's moat is stronger than Microsoft's was with Windows. So "Do no evil" is actually about as inaccurate as you can get. Publishers have little idea what their value is unless they go out there and market their sites themselves. Adsense is an amazing cash cow for Google and I would bet publishers are on the wrong side of that trade! Cheers!

I think reminding people of the donation option once in a while is a great idea. It doesn't even have to be done by Sanjeev. I'll set up a calendar reminder :) I agree that a way must be found to stop the spam. The fee would work, though I suspect that $1 would work as well as $50 (spammers will never ever pay anything, and if they are stupid enough to do and give you their real email/name via Paypal, you just ban them as soon as they spam and keep their money, and report them to their ISP). But better spam-catchers OR getting trusted volunteers to do some admin duties would also work. Most really popular forums end up with a team of admins/moderators, so it would probably be a normal evolution here to delegate some tasks. Just food for thoughts. Good ideas. Perhaps a hybrid? A one time fee for newbies plus quarterly donation drives, sort of like PBS? Yeah, that would work too. And that would take care of the main problem of spam registrations. Paul at Watermelon Webworks is already looking at a solution for the spam registrations. Cheers!

Does Lifetime Member mean I can never leave? :) Others may leave, but you may not Zarley! (cue ominous laughter) Anyway, I understand the problem that you are facing and I'm not sure that I have a better solution to offer, but I would suggest that the fee be a measure of last resort. Hi Stubble, the exact points you made were what through my mind, with the MF Boards being the prime example. I've thought about this a bunch of different ways. We originally put in the ads to compensate for the time and costs of running the board. Advertising works, but I'm at the mercy of Google...after spending 4 hours at a "Google Adsense In Your City" last week, I've found that SEO Optimization was a complete waste of time. Google can adjust their alogrithm to what they want, and publishers have no say as they are a virtual monopoly. I've never received a response from them on numerous attempts to find out why there were significant discrepancies between pageviews in Google Analytics and Google Adsense, as well as how there are sometimes enormous dropoffs in publishing earnings even when CPC's are the same and page views are higher. They just don't bother responding to you...period. We then put in the donation tab to avoid fees, and that worked splendidly in the beginning, but again like many things, it falls by the wayside. Other than a couple of members who regularly donated, there was virtually nothing after the initial stage. And the far bigger problem isn't any sort of compensation for my time, but simply the lack of time I have...combined with the fact that ads and donations have little effect on spam registrations...so this was the sort of last resort to deal with this issue. I never had any inclination to add a membership fee, but then I've found that was really the only viable workaround. The other option is just stopping new memberships altogether for a while, and then opening it up after a while. But again, this has no effect on spam registrations, and creates the same problem you alluded to of organic growth and the forum being almost a fluid, living entity. So I'm not completely sure what the solution is and I'm happy to entertain any ideas the board may have. Just wondering whether those of us who are registered users but not lifetime members, will we be charged as well? Hi Mephistopheles, No, all "Regular Members" will be converted to "Lifetime Members" and there will be no charge ever for existing members. It's just I haven't gotten around to converting all of them...I have to do each one manually, and there are about 1,400 Regular Members I have to still convert. Will it still be possible to lurk around, like reading the board without being registered for these maybe future users? Would it be sufficient to just implement a symbolic fee like 1$ or 5$ to protect against spam? (Not that I mean it is not worth more!) Hi Jeff, Yes, the public will still be able to read the forum, just not post. So newbies will have to decide if they want to participate and pay a fee, or just remain lurkers. On the second question, originally I thought about just a nominal fee for everyone to keep membership costs down, but then the existing members aren't responsible for spam registrations, so why should they pay it? I then also decided that a larger fee would get rid of spam registrations and allow no fee for existing members...they built up the board, so why should they be required to pay? Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut winning answer. You have pros and cons to any route we take. Again, if there are better ideas, please let me know. Nothing will be implemented until January 1st, so that means we can go a different route. The main thing is that I'm thinking about the future. If I'm getting 400 registrations a day now, while filtering over 200, and spending just over an hour a day running the board, how much time am I going to be spending two years from now...five years from now? I'm a hands on guy, and like the board a certain way, so it would be very difficult for me to let volunteers do this. Cheers and thanks!

Along with the spam filter and CAPTCHA, I have three questions registrants have to answer...they still somehow get through! It's a pain in the ass, but I'm still impressed how programmers do it. Cheers!

A board member messaged me and asked this question, so I thought I should post the response to everyone, since others may be wondering: Hi Sanjeev what dose the new "Lifetime Member" on our profiles mean ? Thanks At some point, I'm going to close membership to the board and start charging new members a small annual fee...it's simply going to get too onerous. I get some 400+ membership registrations a month, and only about 30-60 are legitimate. The rest are robot spam registrations and I'm spending an inordinate amount of time filtering them. I have a spam filter and CAPTCHA built-in, but that only catches about a third. So along with just normal monitoring, hosting, and support service, I'm spending a ton of time weeding out memberships. When I eventually do start charging new people to use the board, which will also get rid of all of the spam registrations, all members up until that point will be Lifetime Members (grandfathered) and will never ever be charged to use the board...so if you haven't joined, you probably should. You all have contributed immensely, and as such it's as much your forum as mine...so the board will always be free to you all who have built it. I've just started to switch some of the more heavy users over to that membership...trying to figure out how this will work, and exactly what changes I will need to make to the database. The fee for new members will go into effect January 1, 2013...it will probably be like $25-35 annually. Once I figure out the changes, I will get Paul at Watermelon Webworks to help modify things if necessary. Cheers! Sanjeev

To quote Parsad from Feb 23rd: Yankee only post on political threads which is unlike any other poster here. Even Ben Graham and that other guy post about LVLT..." Actually, it wasn't me who said that. I believe Myth said that. It was in the quote frame that I excerpted...you've got to go back to page 6 of that thread to see who said it originally. Cheers!

I've never seen anyone take a stab at defining the rate at which we should be growing at this point in the recovery. Normally the people who I hear making your comment are people like Mitt Romney himself, in other words people who are inaccessible to me. However you are accessible so you get the question. What rate of growth do you use as what it "should be", and what is your method of determining this rate? To me it seems such a difficult task, as we've got historical comparisons to Japan yet they had the rest of the world growing to help drag them along. Or we've had the numerous comparisons to past recessions, but they all had different contexts as well. Yeah Eric, this is what drives me nuts too. I didn't agree with significant amounts of money spent by the government, in particular much of the stimulus spending, but alot of other things were absolutely necessary to just keep the gears from completely rusting over. We've just been through the worst period in U.S. economic history since the 1930's, and everyone wants things to improve overnight. Well, the hard truth is they don't improve overnight and not even over several years in such circumstances. If it takes the average American family probably about 8-10 years to deleverage from a 120% debt to income ratio, then exactly how long would it take a sovereign nation...four years...please! As Eric stated, Japan had the rest of the world carrying them and it's been almost 25 years! Tell them about how fast their economy should be growing...they've pretty much done everything under the sun to try and get things moving. Unfortunately, Japan isn't too keen on immigration, and their demographics have forced them into the very predicament they've feared. Who the hell is going to buy houses in Japan to reflate assets? You don't have the same problem here. Housing is recovering, corporations are generating record profits, banks are the best capitalized they've been in 50 years. You don't have a credit crunch anymore, but a credit glut...too much capital everywhere and no one wants to use it. Small businesses are still finding it difficult to get funding. Venture capital is still difficult to find. M&A's are still slow. Fear is driving the credit markets right now, not actual fundamentals. Is there substantial deleveraging still going on...yes, it will continue over the next few years...but there is no real reason why capital markets in North America should remain tight. It's fear! And unfortunately, no administration is going to fix that. It only happens with time as people forget and move forward. As their lives start to recover. The U.S. will recover, and it doesn't matter if it's Romney or Obama. Cheers!

It is the debt load that is crippling the economy. It's not the debt load that is causing the problem. The economy wasn't suffering when everyone was acquiring debt, nor when debt had reached proportions slightly less than they are now. Corporations are achieving record profit margins. It was a credit crunch that led the economy to slow down, and then the subsequent deleveraging which slowed it further. You then had asset prices deteriorate and consumers naturally decreased their level of consumption...in other words the engine stalled. The government then tried to prime the pump and fire up the engine, but it's not working very well because you have engines stalling all over the world. And how did all this come about? Because of various levels of past stimulus, either through tax cuts, interest rate cuts, lax lending policies to appease various groups and inordinate amounts of capital flowing through the hands of idiots! Both democratic and conservative! Romney and Ryan, or Obama and Biden, will all continue their rhetoric. They will have very little influence on what actually happens going forward. The system will eventually work it's way through the process, and things they do may speed the process or impede it...think Japan! But they have no idea what to do, and neither does anyone else. They are simply capitalizing on Obama's vulnerability, just like he did with Bush (not too hard), and none of them will make an ounce of difference. If things improve in the next four years, whichever party wins will get the credit, but in reality they would have done little. The U.S. succeeds in spite of their politicians, not because of them...the system works because capitalism is self-correcting. Cheers!

Is the growth coming from acquisitions or are they organically growing? In other words, are they just buying growth? Both. As long as the return on capital over time is adequate, it doesn't matter if it's organic or purchased. How much growth at Berkshire is acquired or organic...it's both. CEO's should always be concerned with return on capital, not simply the legacy of their business or growing at any cost. Cheers!

In value investing, you do best when the "smart money" has pulled out and then the "dumb money" has also pulled out after following the smart money in too late. Dell is getting to that point. No one really wants to own it and even other value investors are looking bad, because you tend to come in a bit early...so they are even second-guessing themselves. I love it when people start to throw something away. It could very well get cheaper, and that is fine by me. Cheers!

Romney's speech was far better than Ryan's. Condoleeza Rice seriously should have been chosen as VP to get the minority and female votes...I think she's more capable than Ryan too. I like Romney...don't like Ryan as VP. Romney will be a hell of a lot better than anything the Republicans have given us in a long time too! It's going to be a close election. And if I ever hear another American talk about fanatical religious groups around the world, then they've got to simply look at the Republican Party...God Lord...excuse my hypocrisy! I felt like I was being recruited by the Jehovah's Witness or something during the telecast. Even one of the commentators on CNN said something like..."I've always found those that believe in a higher power to be humble, giving, sincere and honest people." So atheists and agnostics are evil, lying, cheating, egomaniacs! ;D Cheers!

True. People were saying the same type of things about RIMM's valuation..until the earnings started going away. I follow what Prem does very closely, and I've never touched RIMM. At our AGM in April in Toronto, attendees at our AGM asked me what I thought of RIMM and at what price I would buy it...I said "Maybe 5 bucks!" It was trading around $13.50 at the time and never got there. I still have no real interest in investing in RIMM...they have really two businesses (hardware & services)...and both are completely intertwined with nothing in development that would allow them to grow. Unless they do something significant at RIMM, it will eventually be a liquidation play, and five bucks is all I would pay! But DELL is not in the same position. You have multiple lines of business growing, while their formerly core business (PC's) is deteriorating. Still very profitable, but everyone can see clearly that the business will decline significantly going forward. I also did the same sort of analysis as the Seeking Alpha article. What is the worst case scenario here? What is the company worth without that PC business? And that is where my thinking changed, because I had not paid attention to Dell in nearly two years. I did not notice the changes that were happening in their other businesses. If the price keeps falling, it will be our largest position at some point...very, very cheap. Cheers!

I always like Francis' frank dissection of his mistakes. Like Buffett, he makes much more of his mistakes than any successes...tremendous humility. Cheers!

That would be smart. They are better off letting Michelle Obama speak. I did really enjoy Condolezza Rice's speech though, and I think the Republicans would certainly attract alot more people with her running as VP instead of Ryan. Ryan reminds me too much of John Edwards...gosh, schucks...wink, wink, nudge, nudge...oh did I do that? Cheers!

Buffett pledges more to charity, including his children's foundations. Cheers! http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/08/30/warren-buffett-celebrates-birthday-by-loving-his-children/?mod=yahoo_hs http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-30/buffett-pledges-3-billion-more-to-children-s-foundations-1-.html?cmpid=yhoo

I understand the frustration with Obama, and the disagreement on various policies, actions, etc, but is Paul Ryan going to be any better as Vice-President to Romney? This guy loves twisting facts to fit his agenda. I trust Romney far more than I trust Ryan! http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-ryan-takes-factual-shortcuts-speech-070905927.html Cheers!

Article on Berkshire, Buffett & Omaha. Cheers! http://finance.yahoo.com/news/buffett-near-82-reflects-staying-201302516.html

Sanjeev, for clarification, by book value do you mean tangible bv or regular bv? Of book. As the company gets stronger and they run off litigation and losses, then book becomes a pretty good proxy for the value of the company. Presently, I would prefer if they just bought at tangible book or less, but as the issues around the company disappear over the next few years, they could go up to 90% of book on buybacks. But when the company gets up there, then I would prefer if they just started paying larger dividends, as many investors could then allocate it for better returns even after tax. Cheers!