Parsad

No, I think it's because of Buffett double-speak...do as I say, not as I do! As many people have said, and often these people are lynched for their comments, but Buffett does say certain things and does the opposite. What should concern Berkshire investors slightly, is the fact that he said that when the credit crisis hit, even Berkshire would have gone down if the government didn't intervene. It would have been last, but it probably would have gone down also as he stated. Thus, even Buffett would have been a very smart person who went down because of leverage and dominoes. Cheers!

What happened to the 50 technicians who stayed on to try and get them under control? Is a meltdown imminent now? Cheers!

...In The World Ripe For Discounting. Interesting little article on Overstock and some of their new website experiments. Cheers! http://emoney.allthingsd.com/20110315/overstock-says-no-shortage-of-inventory-in-the-world-thats-ripe-for-discounting/?reflink=ATD_yahoo_ticker

Someone has changed their tone in a few days. I hope you are right. I didn't say that it is guaranteed. Just that there is a distinct possibility. It will all depend on the total overall impact of the insurance losses relative to industry capital. The original estimates were relatively low compared to the amount of excess capital in the industry. That number has ballooned over the last couple of days to the $35B number by AIR. That is only earthquake losses, and not tsunami-related or business-interruption losses. The number I heard this morning on Bloomberg was that the actual total impact could be $200B, but how much of that will impact insurance directly is another matter and too early to tell. You can watch the interview below with Willis Group's Joe Plumeri. Cheers! http://www.bloomberg.com/video/67649402/

Cash is like a stock. Right now it's cheap so I'm borrowing it, if it was expensive I'd sell it. Remember what Buffett said about leverage: "If you're smart, you don't need it. And if you're dumb, you've got no business using it!" Cheers!

I'm quite certain, with the preliminary estimates being thrown around by knowledgeable insurance executives, that this has the distinct possibility of creating a pretty hard market for reinsurance...especially in Asian markets. Cheers!

Why Cheers? Have you ever read any of my posts?

They are already panicking here in Vancouver. Many pharmacies are already out of potassium iodide, because some people are afraid that radioactive particles will make their way here through the jetstream! Cheers!

Hasn't gone to trial yet. Overstock's is scheduled for December. I think Fairfax's is set for some time in September or later. Cheers!

Pardon my French, but as Broxburnboy on a previous post mentioned, Zerohedge has started an extensive story covering the Fairfax suit against the hedge funds. After reading it, I felt that this thing deserved it's own thread. Some of the things I had no idea about, that are now being revealed in the release of materials and emails. A good example is that I had no clue, even after all this time, that SAC Capital had attempted to get Quentin Broad, analyst at CIBC, to initiate reports on Fairfax. I just touted Broad in another post about how some analysts had stuck to their guns during that period, yet apparently it seems he was contacted by SAC! Don't know if he was involved in any way, or just refused to initiate coverage. Wow! Zerohedge said that this is just the tip of the iceberg that they will cover in this first article! Cheers! http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fairfax-chronicles-part-1-exposing-sacs-alleged-market-manipulation-and-insider-trading-sche

The design is horrendous for o.co. This forum is designed better than their website. Thanks! But I actually think their site is designed quite well. Ours is just set up for plain functionality...more like Google or something. But their site is as much about the shopping experience as functionality...like Walmart, Target, etc. I think it's better than Amazons. Cheers!

I think if you check board members at other public companies you will see they have similar compensation arrangements including per meeting payments. My guess is this is that far out of line. The CEO's compensation was over $5M in 2010. That's a far cry from the $900K salary the year before, or the $280,000 salary the year before that! You've got a company that made about $30M last year. If they earned the same this year, about $7M would go to the CEO, and another $500K to the board of directors. $7.5M in compensation for a company with $300M in equity and $30M in earnings. That's a nice gig! How do you explain that to the thousands of employees making $8/hour, or your shareholders who are footing that bill...Pay for performance? Cheers!

Well, they certainly reinforce the image of these Wall Street assholes being regular douches. I would expect Loeb to dress up as Hitler like Prince Harry Williams and attend a costume party, or I'm sure jurors could view him paddling the asses of a bunch of fraternity pledges. And is Sender still around? I thought he would have suffered from severe levels of radiation due to the 25 LCD monitors around him all day. I still can't get enough of this picture! Cheers! http://www.businessinsider.com/adam-sender-wins-bob-dylans-hand-written-times-they-are-a-changin-lyrics-2010-12

This won't be enough to create a hard market. There was some $500B in industry capital and surplus in 2009, and you've had asset prices rise, so those levels should be higher. It's going to take a couple of years of high catastrophe losses to create a hard market, or another significant drop in asset prices, in particular fixed income assets. Cheers!

No, that statistic will change from quarter to quarter, year to year. If it was prolonged, then that would eat into FFH capital, but that is there to give you some understanding of the year's operations. The main concern is if there is enough interest and dividend income to cover interest costs and corporate expenses. The idea is that if all those other lines are normally break-even, will the company continue to cover interest and general corporate costs? Yes. Over time, you will have underwriting gains and losses, as well as investment gains and losses, and fluctuations in the other line items such as runoff. Always measure any investments operations over a period of time...5 years. Make the estimate of intrinsic value based on what is currently happening, but you can't ignore the general operation of the business over longer periods. Cheers!

So if you've ever wondered why Fairfax is so careful with all their elaborate hedges...think about it now! It's lucky this quake didn't hit Tokyo. Fairfax is built to withstand a hit like that, plus a 50% drop in the stock market...which still could happen, although remote. You just never know what can happen, so it's always better to be prepared. Cheers!

Max, I think you are on the right track. I would guess he owned less than 15% of the assets in the Lion Fund, so about 30,000 shares, plus whatever he held personally. That's why I think this is even more ridiculous. If he controlled 35% of the company personally, and he wanted to treat it like his personal piggy bank, then so be it, since the shareholders couldn't really do much about it. But he owns perhaps 3% of the stock! This is insane! Cheers!

The Tsunami and liquifaction pictures are nuts! Go to CNN. Cheers!

I think it's generally an issue for any business, but it's a bigger issue when it has to do with food, medicine, water quality, etc. In this case, you tear the division apart, find the problem, who was responsible for oversight, rectify the issue, and promise your customers that you have learned from the error and it will never happen again. Cheers!

Well, I believe there was only one female attendee at the FFH Dinner last year, and Sam Mitchell made a humorous remark. I'm guessing that Comic-con has a better ratio than we do! ;D Cheers!

Exactly CONeal! You shut it down, take the hit and make sure it never happens again. Not issue one recall after another for a year. I think that's why I'm personally leaning towards the idea that JNJ's CEO should be fired by the board. Cheers!

You know what's pissing me off? That the haven't fired anyone yet on the McNeil side. Someone has to be held accountable. If it isn't the CEO of JNJ, then he better fire someone that is directly responsible! Cheers!

I purposely left him off, since he did issue a mea culpa and went long. Nonetheless, he did provide a forum to jackasses like Herb Greenberg and Jim Chanos. It's why I've never gone to another Value Investing Congress and never will. Cheers!

Article on how Bill Gross has sold all of his treasuries, whereas Fairfax is betting on bouts of deflation as the deleveraging process continues. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/streetwise/pimco-sells-treasuries-as-fairfax-buys/article1937158/ Frankly, if I had to bet on Bill Gross or Brian Bradstreet, I would pick Brian hands-down! Cheers!

The FFH.TO quote is in Canadian dollars on the TSX. The FRFHF.PK quote is the U.S. dollar quote through the OTC board. You were correct in calculating the book value from the financials, but then compare it to the OTC board price...so it is an apples to apples or US$ to US$ comparison. Don't worry there are no dumb questions. Only dumb mistakes when people don't ask enough questions! ;D Cheers!