ERICOPOLY

What terms of recourse does the lender have in Vancouver compared to Florida which also has recourse financing? And Nevada which does too? What about Caif and Ariz? Recourse? Calif is famously non-recourse. Don't know about Ariz. I just have Florida stuck in my head because I keep hearing people cite non-recourse as a major reason we had reckless borrowing. Actually the Australians like to say that because they have recourse lending their borrowers will be prudent (but in reality they are doing 3% down financing). Florida shows that recourse doesn't seem to matter much when it comes to prudence. I have been playing phone tag with a Comstock Mortgage guy in Sacramento for the past week. When I finally get through to him I'll be able to tell you. I'm looking for multifamily properties.

Some info from a Florida foreclosure defense attorney: http://southfloridalawblog.com/tag/recourse-state/

What terms of recourse does the lender have in Vancouver compared to Florida which also has recourse financing? And Nevada which does too? are you sure Florida has recourse? http://www.loansafe.org/forum/foreclosure-laws/4130-recourse-v-non-recourse-states.html Yes. The banks can pursue deficiency judgements in Florida for up to 20 years (if they renew their right after the first ten years).

What terms of recourse does the lender have in Vancouver compared to Florida which also has recourse financing? And Nevada which does too?

How can you listen to it anywhere? Do you carry around a 2TB drive with you? Slingbox I am heading in a different direction, outsourcing my home IT to these cloud service companies. I don't need to back things up, and don't need to keep the physical backup in a different location (safe from fire and theft). I am paying for making it simple.

How can you listen to it anywhere? Do you carry around a 2TB drive with you? Everyone is an idiot for paying Google to store their files online (Google docs)?

I find it strange that only a few months after the Fed let banks hike dividends and buy back shares, the market is thinking they'll be hit with much higher capital rules. The rumors of Fed intent don't match their actions.

I wonder what their algorithm is for determining whether or not a song is on your disk. They can't simply look at the file header, or can they? If so, point me to a database of file header info and I can write a simple tool to spit out files with those headers. Then iTunes will give me access to the real version of those files? 25,000 songs via iMatch for just $25 per year? Distributing a database of file headers is probably not illegal -- as opposed to distributing actual pirated copies of music. I used to pay for Rhapsody -- but I gave up on it because there are too many artists/labels that won't participate. However, you could see some hackers taking advantage of the iMatch offer -- that's only $2 per month increase over what you pay for Rhapsody, and the iTunes library via iMatch can fill in the holes of the Rhapsody service. So you just need a front end app for streaming music that merges Rhapsody with iMatch, seamlessly. There must be some sort of random file sampling & matching going on -- the file header match would be too easy to cheat. Some hacker will probably find a way to modify the code of iTunes in-memory at run time if need be, to force it to say "yes, it matches!".

This is a completely new way of doing cloud music. Surprised by the "yawn" and "nothing new" attitude.

I like their idea of just letting you use a copy of the music already in their cloud (from any one of your devices) if you can prove you already have a copy somewhere on one of your drives. And these can just be files you ripped from your old CD collection, not necessarily anything you bought via iTunes store. I suppose even if you have a terabyte of music data, it's still only $25 a year. Amazon charges $1,000 a year for a terabyte of online storage.

That was good. He says there is a shortage of housing. I wish she would have asked him why the shortage has not impacted rents to the same degree as negotiated selling prices. That's a question that can't be explained away by the "shortage" argument, because it simply asks why shortage drives one higher relative to the other. I guess nobody gets bullish and bids up rent with cheap credit?

I was reading the Sydney Morning Herald today, found a couple of interesting articles: "Australians had up to 60 per cent of their total wealth tied up in real estate. This is one of the world's highest rates - more than double the US rate." http://www.smh.com.au/business/bank-boss-questions-gearing-20110602-1fit2.html#ixzz1OBD1bCNR "ANZ Bank has increased LVRs from 90 to 95 per cent on most of its loans over the last six months, RateCity data showed. Commonwealth Bank now offers up to 97 per cent on most of its home loans." http://www.smh.com.au/business/banks-offer-bigger-loans-to-homebuyers-20110603-1fjvn.html

Do you still own some C and BAC? Still own C, but traded out of BAC. EDIT: Have some BAC now -- bought the 2013 $12.50 strike for $1.37. Break even point is barely higher than today's tangible BV.

I will probably be taking some msft off the table for WFC if we get another day like this.

MSFT has been a price trap, not a value trap.

Buffett has bought no additional Berkshire shares, but said he might buy MSFT were it not for Gates being so close to him and a director (according to Buffett himself). You're getting nowhere with this insider thing.

Yes *irrespective* of stock price.

How much net buying is going on at Berkshire or Leucadia? BRK at over 17x earnings and close to 20% over BV isn't nearly as cheap as some people on here are making it out to be. It's cheaper than it was a couple month ago, but I wouldn't consider it a bargain. Your 17x is partly the result of consolidating only the dividends of the equity holdings.

How much net buying is going on at Berkshire or Leucadia?

You are already eating lots of insects: http://ucanr.org/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=795 May as well just raise crickets and meal worms for dinner. It's meant to be very easy to keep them, even if you don't have a yard. Easier on the environment than raising cattle.

It would have wiped out Berkshire Hathaway, so you aren't joking when you say "everyone".

Why not use their foreign cash to buy back their shares on the foreign market, would that be considered as repatriated money by the IRS? BeerBaron I almost said the same thing, but then figured they would already be doing that were it possible. Because CSCO which loves to buy shares back would have done that with the foreign cash pile and paid dividends with the domestic one.

My idea of what they should do is this: 1) Borrow at low rates to buy back shares (they are AAA so they get the best rates) in tender offer (they've done a large tender offer before) 2) Keep an offsetting amount of cash overseas They can always pay the loan off later on, for example, when the US govt eliminates the excessive tax on repatriated earnings. Can't hurt. It's not like it's risky in any way. Even if they don't lift the tax on repatriated foreign earnings, the spread they'll make on borrowing cheap to buy shares will cover that tax after just a few years if they need to pay off the debt with that foreign cash. They likely would be borrowing at interest rates similar to JNJ quality companies, so they could use their foreign cash to buy such bonds and the earned income would wash out against what they'd be paying out in interest. Given the lower foreign tax rates on that income vs the tax deductions at higher US rates, this might even work out to positive net interest income.

Intuitively, I can't help but feel that the sharpest stock movements (the move in relative valuation) will happen over the first half of the life of the warrants. Therefore, you know you can get the deep-in-the-money LEAPs now on BAC (for the same price of the warrants) with very little volatility premium, and then later when the warrants are deep-in-the-money (with far less volatility premium relative to today) you can move into them to squeeze the last few drops from the lemon. It's true that the warrants don't miss out on the dividend, but there won't be any sizeable dividend from BAC until the problem at hand (the thing weighing on the stock), is cleared. By that time you'll have doubled or tripled on the options, and you can then go to the warrants if that still floats your boat (I'll bet that if BAC doubled in two years and you cash out on the LEAPS, you'll find something better than going 2:1 leverage on BAC). This strategy has some risk around the date of LEAPS expiration (temporary stock weakness), but for the same ultimate results I believe you can put a lot less money at risk in the first place (because this strategy is likely to beat the one of holding the warrants today, IMO). Just me, but once the stock has doubled the idea of being levered 2:1 into a "fairly" priced stock would gnaw on me, which is where I would be if I went for the warrants. Also, if you'd be finding yourself selling the warrants when levered 2:1 against a fairly priced stock, how much better will your returns be versus just buying the common today? I think for most of you holding fairly priced stocks with leverage is not your style. Put differently, if you think you could hang on with 2:1 leverage position AFTER the stock has doubled, why shouldn't you do that right now before it has doubled?

Why wouldn't you want the cash in your own hands? I think someone like me benefits by having a smart person make my decisions, but some of you guys are bright and talented.