ERICOPOLY

I remember losing my coverage in 2012 when I moved from Washington to California. I was no longer a resident of Washington so they were forced to drop me. Nobody in California would take me on due to a pre-existing condition. You guys are right, can't wait to go back to that system again.

I'm ready for the coming ban on incandescents -- I'll go back to gas lighting! http://carolinalanterns.com/

I think the benefit would be clearer if they came from wealthy families with an estate-tax burden. The money is 40% lost to taxes already -- by purchasing the education for the kids, you pass along their future income stream estate-tax free. It would be harder to directly gift them the future income stream -- let's put it that way. So you save taxes while also giving them something to do that is respectable.

This one is a gem: Similarly, the solar industry cannot use Master Limited Partnerships because the federal statute creating this structure makes fossil-fuel companies eligible, but not renewable energy companies. https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/17499-shrinking-solar-soft-costs

How did you manage to drop out of the fourth grade? The police would take my kids away if I tried that on them.

Yes, exactly! They could be using retained earnings to invest in the stock market, instead they are using them to buy whole insurance businesses. That will most probably change, but right now it seems to me a good strategy. Gio We're saying different things. I'm saying the strategy is unchanged by the market level of stocks. They buy the company, then buy more stocks with the float. If market is high, they hedge. It might be... But: 1) it seems to me the trend of purchasing wholly owned insurance companies has accelerated in the last few years, expecially in emerging markets; 2) many seem to think FFH is much more static than I think it will turn out to be: if the P/E of the S&P500 were 10, I highly doubt they would be using earnings to buy insurance companies... Gio The biggest ones were the NB and ORH buyouts. They could have been buying equities instead. But even better is to buy these companies and also buy equities! (with the float). So I just see them doing this whether or not the markets are high or low. Oh well, not a terribly important point to argue about.

Yes, exactly! They could be using retained earnings to invest in the stock market, instead they are using them to buy whole insurance businesses. That will most probably change, but right now it seems to me a good strategy. Gio We're saying different things. I'm saying the strategy is unchanged by the market level of stocks. They buy the company, then buy more stocks with the float. If market is high, they hedge.

I understood it differently: 1) They take retained earnings and use it to buy whole insurance businesses. 2) They are investing a portion of the float from those businesses into the stock market. 3) They can't use the float to invest in whole businesses due to the illiquidity

I'm now approved for 3 mortgages and there is some haggling going on. The first mortgage approval came in at a 5 yr ARM -- brokered by a guy who works for one bank, but the loan he found for me was actually with another bank. Then a second mortgage approval (from yet another broker) came in on a 7 yr ARM with 150 bps lower rate than the 5 yr ARM. Then the first broker let me know that the bank offering the 5 yr ARM offered to drop their rate by 26 bps if I was willing to order loan docs right away. Of course, he let me know it was only because he called their vice president and that they don't normally make exceptions, etc.. etc... So I said no. At this point, the broker who had arranged the 5 yr ARM reminded me that he also worked for a bank and that his buddies in the bank were going to help him out by rushing a loan approval for a loan that meets the same rate as my best option, but still on a 5 yr ARM rather than a 7 yr ARM. All along, the 5 yr ARM is 2.17m and the 7 yr arm is 2m. The rate on both has been haggled down to 3.75% with no points. He then asked me if I was willing to close right away, order the loan docs etc for the 5 yr ARM. I reminded him that 3.75% on a 5 yr ARM isn't the same as 3.75% on a 7 yr ARM. So asked him what the spread typically is. He said .125% to .25%. So I told him I wanted it to be a 5 yr ARM at 3.5% with no points and 2.17m. That was yesterday and he said he'd go push for it. So now I'm waiting for the phone to ring with the news. A couple of takeaways: 1) I had no idea how much of a middle-eastern market place this business is 2) I feel like I'm hitting a pinata with that first broker/bank -- their first offer clearly wasn't their best 3) It's like shopping for a car -- you threaten to walk off the lot and he goes in the back to talk to the manager and comes back with some sort of "special approval that they don't normally do". I'm not going to post the names of the brokers or the companies. I just thought I'd share the experience. I plan to take the 5 yr ARM if he comes back at 3.5%. That allows me to keep the $170k invested for 5 more years -- the 7 YR ARM has opportunity cost which makes the rate for years 6 and 7 higher than they first look.

Today BAC is at $17.16 and BACWSA is at $7.15. The cost of leverage in the warrants dropped. I believe it is near the cheapest it's been since this thread began. Roughly 7% annualized (not counting the missing 1 cent quarterly dividend).

Carnegie is the one who fought for the inheritance/estate tax and claimed "The man who dies rich dies disgraced". He also lobbied other rich to give their wealth away: see "The Gospel of Wealth". One can see a lot of Carnegie in Buffett, but for whatever reason the media never points this out.

More Eurozone Banks Said They Eased Credit Standards for Second Consecutive Survey http://online.wsj.com/articles/ecb-says-banks-continue-easing-loan-standards-1414584031?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

Translation: "We could copy the Tesla but were not able to come out with one" BeerBaron I find it more likely that Tesla could produce a Ford-like vehicle if they wanted to.

I looked all the way back to when I graduated university and entered the workforce -- June 1997. The S&P500 has gained a bit less than 5% annualized since then. The market P/E today is largely the same as in January 1997: http://www.multpl.com/table Go all the way back to Jan 1993 and it has been a 7% annual index increase.

He gets $1B in tax benefits: Ballmer makes slam dunk on Clippers deal http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/67215cd2-5d00-11e4-9753-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#slide0 Steve Ballmer stands to gain as much as $1bn in tax benefits as a result of his $2bn purchase of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, helping to explain why the Microsoft billionaire paid a record price for the club.

IMO, they are diverting tax incentives away from battery electric in order to slow/kill it's adoption. It's basically like fouling the player to prevent a layup.

People like me who care about the amount of energy that is wasted: According to the United States Department of Energy Office of Power, the most daunting problem associated with current hydrogen production is the energy needed to produce it and to provide for energy losses in the hydrogen-to-application chain. Using existing conventional technology, "hydrogen requires at least twice as much energy as electricity twice the tonnage of coal, twice the number of nuclear plants, or twice the field of PV panels to perform an equivalent unit of work. Most of today's hydrogen is produced from natural gas, which is only an interim solution since it discards 30% of the energy in one valuable but depletable fuel (natural gas) to obtain 70% of another (hydrogen). The challenge is to develop more appropriate methods based on sustainable energy sources, methods that do not employ electricity as an intermediate step." http://www.altenergy.org/renewables/hydrogen_and_fuel_cells_production.html There are some powerful interests who want hydrogen to succeed -- can you guess who they might be? ::) ::) ::) Anyone remember ethanol? What was wrong about ethanol? Who could argue with growing fuel in the fields, turning lawn clippings into fuel? What is the problem with the equation that creates ethanol? Yes, the amount of energy required in the process of conversion to ethanol. So, how could it possibly be that it ever got political support... if it required a lot of energy? ::) ::) ::)

Batteries... drive it home, plug it in. Hydrogen... drive somewhere to refill it. All the advantages of a pure EV?

So they just have to pull a lever to figure it out? Why haven't they pulled that lever before! You know what he means, Eric. You've mentioned at least one of the levers yourself in the past. He also knows what I mean. They've been pulling levers for years. Results? Are there more levers to pull? Yes. Will results get better from those levers?

So they just have to pull a lever to figure it out? Why haven't they pulled that lever before!

Ford Mustang drivers are tired of their noisy cars being left in the dust at the traffic light? There must be something emasculating about driving a muscle car with it's roaring engine but being "muscle bound". All that bark, and no bite. Reminds me of a line from the Reservoir Dogs "Are you going to bark all day, little doggy, or are you going to bite?". Same goes for their truck lines -- you get a lot more torque out of an electric motor. A Tesla heavy-duty pickup would be just awesome.

I have a charging unit in my garage. However, it doesn't output 120kW to the car. And neither does anything that NRG offers with that subscription.

Yes, if you are happy with a gutless EV it's a wonderful way to go. The larger the battery, the more "oomph" when you step on the gas.

GM's 200 mile range pure EV for $30,000 will have to use Tesla's supercharging network, or perhaps GM will have to build one of their own. Otherwise the $35,000 Tesla will have a huge charging advantage for not much extra monthly payment on the car. So that's fine if GM joins Tesla's network of chargers -- there will be a lot of money paid by GM to Tesla that will fund expansion of the network.

Tesla would never merge with GM. GM destroyed the electric car many years ago. Why would Musk let his baby in the hands of convicted murderers? Maybe Tesla gets big enough to buy GM since their enterprise value is almost the market cap of Tesla. That would be funny to watch unfold. Tesla sources the batteries from Panasonic. If GM wanted to make an electric car, assuming it was so easy, they would have done it. The fact is a good electric car is best designed with a blank sheet of paper. There are little if any compromises that Tesla have made in designing the Model S. Given they focus on cash flow and not EPS, they are willing to not focus on profits until it forces the competition to do the same. There is a lot more to Tesla's "monopoly" than just the batteries. Not to say the Volt isn't okay for what it is. Don't forget charging the batteries. Putting them together is one thing, super-charging them with 120 kW is another. Tesla needed to design both the charger, the battery, and the charging babysitter to make them all work together properly. Batteries heat up when you charge them quickly -- it's really tricky to charge the battery at the speed of Tesla's superchargers.