zarley

One problem with the Coverdell's is the contribution limits -- $2,000 per year IIRC. But they do benefit from the flexibility. I've gone simple for my kids with 529's at Vanguard. Simplicity and higher contributions won out. Nothing stopping you from doing both, but I don't need two extra accounts to manage.

Ouch for the USA. Hoping Portugal will underperform and perhaps a replay of 2002 where the US won 3-2.

Great read - love Montier's writing. Thanks for sharing.

Josh Brown reproduces a note he got from an institutional investment advisor regarding the mentality of institutional clients. Interesting perspective on the forces driving the investment of huge pools of capital. One might think that illiquidity and high fees would make some of these "investments" non-starters, but it doesn't seem so. http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/12/confessions-of-an-institutional-investor/ The author might be painting with a broad brush and projecting the decisions of a few onto the whole; but it rings true to me in a lot of ways. Interesting read.

Listen to Kraven and Onyx.

Good points. Although, it does depend on what measure of money you're thinking of. M2 as tracked by the Fed is certainly higher now than several years ago. Private estimates of M3 (since the Fed stopped officially tracking it a few years ago) are closer to what you describe from what I've seen (e.g., shadowstats). I think this takes it too far. One person does not have the power to do anything of the sort. If your one person is Ben Bernanke, he's the head of a board that has the power to influence things. Your immeasurably complex system works on both ends of the transaction. The Fed (not Bernanke solo) can push some levers in the system, but cannot control it in either direction. You can't have it both ways. But, none of that gets to why the misuse of the term inflation to describe monetary expansion is in any way helpful or anything other than misdirection.

I agree with everything you said. Regarding the bolded, I agree there are vested interests in selling gold investment products, but I think that is secondary to this criticism being 100% politically motivated - the usual "Evil government (and Obama) is debasing the dollar and inflating us into poverty!". I tend to agree with that as well. That's the bit about fear in my post. You and I hold what I would consider the conventional view of inflation. We probably won't disagree much on this particular issue. I think another way to put the conventional view would be to compare monetary easing to potential energy. Money growth isn't inflation, but it does provide some of the raw materials for inflation in the future. So, we can't dismiss the risks of inflation inherent in the system, but that is not the same as actually experiencing inflation. A drawn bow has potential energy, which can be released in the firing of an arrow at high speed. But, that is not the only possible outcome. The archer can relax his bow in a controlled manner, resulting in no fired arrow at all. So, standing in front of an archer with a drawn bow is not the same as actually being shot with an arrow. Even so, it's not a great place to stand.

This is the reason why there is so much confusion. A small group of people have decided to replace the generally accepted definition of a term 'inflation - a general rise in prices in an economy' with their own meaning 'inflation - an increase in the money supply.' Instead of just using a term like money expansion, they have co-opted a term with an accepted meaning and muddied the waters. If I were less charitable, I'd propose that this confusion is intentional so as to sell things like gold and gold funds and to maintain a level of fear in segments of the population when actual economic outcomes aren't what you expected. Is a general rise in the price level hard to measure with precision? Sure. But, CPI and the billion price project do a reasonable job of determining if there is a prevailing, general increase in prices. Sure, everyone's consumption patterns are different, so increases in one sector might effect me differently than anyone else, but that's immaterial to the notion of a high-level movement of prices over time. Is there significant inflation in the US economy at the moment? No, not really. Has there been a broad-based decline in purchasing power over the last 3-5 years? Not really. I haven't seen it. My cost of health care has gone up. my cost of housing has gone down considerably. Food costs are up in spots, but not egregiously so across the board. An expanding money supply isn't inflation if the velocity of money is declining.

Excellent interview. Thanks for sharing.

The whole notion of considering ROI on education spending is an interesting one. I had a GF back in the day who decided she needed a PhD in Psychology. She wound up going to a private college in Southern California where she was on track to rack up something like $150-200k in student loans while she got her degree. While she conceptually understood what she was doing, she knew so many people who had gone that path that it seemed reasonable to her even though she could do the math on debt repayments and her likely salary range. We "broke up" during her first year (not for financial reasons), so I don't know how that all worked out for her. Would I have broken it off for financial reasons at some point? I don't know. Things worked out fine for me, as a soon met the girl who would become my wife. She was, and still is, a gainfully employed civil engineer with no school debt.

Am I understanding correctly that the market for attorneys is such that a reasonably intelligent graduate of a low to mid-level law school should not expect to make more than $25-30,000 per year starting out, and have limited expectations for that to improve? And that one could rack up in excess of $200,000 in student debt on their way to an annual salary that is meaningfully less than my first job out of school as a project manager at a small nondescript market research company close to 20 years ago? Am I getting that right? WTF would anyone go to law school under those circumstances?

Also recall that the weapons of mass destruction comment was not long after the General Re purchase. Warren moved quickly to significantly reduce the derivatives book at General Re, incurring losses along the way. From the 2008 Annual Report: I think he saw what was happening inside General Re and started to realize how dangerous the derivatives practices at large financial institutions had become. He may have seen the the potential to destroy Berkshire in those contracts and knew what needed to be done. Booking $400 million in loses on those contracts may have been one of the best investments Buffett ever made -- consider how badly that might have gone if those contracts blew up during the crisis.

Your best option here is to minimize costs and choose a small collection of the Vanguard funds in an asset allocation that is reasonable for you. Also might want to clarify the distinction in your plan regarding the investor shares vs. Admiral shares vs. institutional shares. For example, the VFINX and VINIX are both S&P 500 index funds with the difference, as far as I recall, being the amount of funds invested. I'd think your plan would give you access to the institutional shares which has a significantly lower mgmt cost. If so, the institutional shares of the VINIX and VBTIX should be the backbone of a cost-minimizing asset allocation strategy.

K-Mart Puerto Rico . . . what is that? 20 Stores? Edited to remove rudeness.

It's not 28% of the Holding Co's market cap. If you want to think of it that way, it's like 6.3% of the holding co's market cap (400/6300). Not sure what market cap sunrider was talking about; possibly sears canada. Another way to think of it is $400 million for a special dividend (mostly to the holding co) that will go straight into the SYWR incinerator. I'll agree, though, that it does reflect positively on the overall value of the real estate.

http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60286194 Some limited discussion of IBM at the 42 minute mark. Little more than the quote that IBM will have record EPS for the year.

For me it depends. If the repurchases fully go to reduce share count, then I ignore that (don't subtract it from operating cash flow). If the repurchases are just a way of masking the dillutive effects of stock options (e.g., a lot of tech stocks) then I consider it a cost to shareholders and so I will adjust my FCF estimates as a result.

Great interview. Thanks for sharing.

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/09/23/blackberry-shares-halted/

Not clear if Fairfax is buying RIM or if a third party (potentially lead by Fairfax) is taking RIM private. I've read it both ways. As a Fairfax owner I hope Fairfax is doing a Berkshire type deal where they're involved in the financing and a third party will be the owner/operator. Something where Fairfax ups its equity stake and provides financing while a PE group owns the majority and runs the day to day. That's my hope anyway.

Great info. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing. Excellent resource.

The 2011 Annual is available at the Goodhaven site (linked in my first response earlier).

There is a 2011 semi-annual report. I found it at the SEC search site for GOODX: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/811030/000089853111000287/ghf-ncsrs.htm Not sure about a .pdf though.

There aren't a lot to collect. The annuals and the recent (2013) semi-annual are available at their site: http://www.goodhavenfunds.com/fund/shareholder_reports.html Here's a link to the 2012 semi-annual: https://materials.proxyvote.com/default.aspx?docHostID=137176 If that doesn't work I can email it or post it to a public dropbox. I don't know if there was a 2011 semi-annual. I'll poke around my email to see if I got any notices before 2012.