Liberty

Average Canadian house worth $559,317 last month, up 10% in past year http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crea-house-prices-1.4115208

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They press release a new contract, which you almost never see. MBB on Twitter asked and the CFO said their threshold for PR on contracts is $10m (like acquisitions), so it should be at least for that: http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/maryland-transit-administration-awards-contract-trapeze-group-business-unit-constellation-tsx-csu-2216000.htm

Moody's downgrading six canadian banks: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-10/six-canadian-banks-cut-by-moody-s-over-consumers-debt-burden

I thought this interview was interesting (starts Page 36): http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/valueinvesting/sites/valueinvesting/files/Graham%20%20Doddsville_Issue%2030_Spring%202017%20-%20v3.pdf Found via Bluegrass Capital:

Q1: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/PCLN/4442941726x0x941969/A9B700F9-67E5-4D04-B85E-47AEEADBA3BF/PCLN_Group_Earnings_Release_Q117.pdf

Home Capital Sells $1.1 Billion in Mortgages to Third Party [Who? Mystery] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-09/home-capital-sells-1-1-billion-in-mortgages-to-third-party Guessing they probably had to sell their best mortgages to raise capital, leaving them with an even worse book on average..

Fiscal Q2: http://www.transdigm.com/mobile.view?c=196053&v=203&d=1&id=2271210

Yeah, they did. It was at 10:30 AM.

What a swing in Mr. Market's sentiment for LILA today :D

Jeff Bezos interview (37 minutes) from May 5:

Hi CM, Leonard is very consistent in his thinking - like Buffett and Munger - so if you've been following them for a while, there are fewer surprises. That's not a bad thing. So it was a bit like that for me, I can't say he revealed anything totally out of left field at the AGM. The best part was just hearing all of the managers below him speak about their challenges and how they're dealing with them, and realizing that they are also of very high caliber and are totally on-board with the approach. One interesting discussion was on capital allocation, and on his dislike of buybacks (which he wrote about in the past), which means that if the cash is piling up too much and they can't deploy it, we can probably expect special dividends. But he still seems to think that option #1 is deploying the cash, and the changes they've made to their M&A organization seem to be starting to kick in, so we'll see if they can ramp up and meet that challenge. Sorry, that's probably not a very good answer to your question. Send me a private message and I might have something for you ;)

I wasn't doing a trick question based on genetics, I was saying "your kid" as in "a kid you consider your own, that you raised and love" (biological or not). It's not even a theoretical question. Some people have let their kids die voluntarily because of stupid religious beliefs. Is forcing them to cure the kid more evil than letting the kid die because they don't believe in medicine?

Because to a non-libertarian, anything they consider good is a right and must be mandated by force if necessary and anything they consider bad is pure evil and must be outlawed by force if necessary. There is no grey area between must-do and must-not-do. "I'd likely do it, but I wouldn't force someone else to." is an incomprehensible position. To be completely honest, I consider forcing someone to do 'good' (or punishing him for not doing 'good') evil. I'll just move over rkbabang's strawman and go straight to the more interesting point: Situations aren't binary, and evils aren't all on the same level. Not curing your sick child when you can is evil, and maybe someone forcing you to cure your sick child is also on some level evil, but are they equivalent? And is the good that comes from your child being cured more than balancing out whatever "evil" comes from you being forced to do something that you wouldn't do voluntarily? In the real world, there are many variables that need to be balanced out and taken into account, as inelegant as that makes the model to people who like to see everything in black and white.

Wireless partnership for Comcast and Charter: https://www.wsj.com/articles/comcast-charter-to-strike-wireless-partnership-1494200087

So you don't believe in sins of omission. Ok. If we meet, I won't shake your hand, that'll be neutral. My example clearly went as far as I could to make the situation overwhelmingly obvious, but you can come up with scenarios that are less far on that spectrum and realistic based on the same principle.

Fine, reformulate my thought experiment to be realistic in whatever way you want. Ie. You're in a situation where you can safely release kidnapped children sex slaves. If you choose to do nothing, to me that's an evil omission. Ie. You have information that would save someone innocent's life (you know they've been poisoned and know what the antidote is). If you say or do nothing, that's evil. It's the whole Walter White watching Jane die without doing anything scenario... Your point is also interesting, but not really what I want to get into. I was just pointing out that I disagree that there can be no evil in inaction.

Q1 results: http://www.libertyglobal.com/pdf/press-release/LG-Q1-2017-Press-Release-FINAL.pdf

Q1 results: http://www.libertyglobal.com/pdf/press-release/LG-Q1-2017-Press-Release-FINAL.pdf

Clutch, you're correct in the real world, but you're changing my thought experiment, which is different from answering it. The trolley problem doesn't exist in the real world either, but we can still learn things from thinking about it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/business/inside-vws-campaign-of-trickery.html Inside VW’s Campaign of Trickery: New details emerge in Volkswagen’s broad conspiracy to cover up a campaign aimed at deceiving pollution regulators.

Thought experiment: There's a button in front of you. If you push it, everybody in the world will stop suffering and be forever happy (kidnapped kids held as sex slaves will be freed, cancer patients will be cured, etc), each according to their very own definition of happiness. There's no catch, no downside, nothing bad happens to you if you don't push the button. You're aware of those rules, of everything that's going on, so there's no confusion. I think that if you don't push it, that's an evil act, IMO.

Looks like FFH, among others, have passed on HCG (not surprising considering their views on real estate in Canada): https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-05/inside-canada-s-push-to-contain-the-fallout-from-home-capital

LYV Q1: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/live-nation-entertainment-reports-first-quarter-2017-financial-results-300451901.html

It would have been even better if he had actually gotten around to talking about, you know, Fairfax India a bit. Ok, he mentioned HWIC's good track record in India, and the highish fees, and the fact that India may be a promising place to invest in general, but that's about it. This blog's M.O. is to basically be a sream-of-consciousness loosely centered around a topic. It wasn't really a writeup about Fairfax India, sorry for the disappointment.