Liberty

It's like xmas! ;D

I often hear this (in fact, it seems to be as far as anyone from banks or the government is willing to go in newspapers). Can you elaborate on what makes you think this "sideways" scenario is more likely than a bust? My understanding is that markets generally tend to overshoot both ways and rarely find some stable middle path, especially when there's leverage/government intervention/irrational beliefs among market participants/hot money pouring in/people think something is safer than it truly is/etc (I know this describes almost everything everywhere, but that's my point -- this isn't different). With everybody in debt to their ears, interest rates at historic lows and random economic shocks bound to hit the Canadian economy at some point or other, I kind of have trouble seeing how this would just result in prices stabilizing rather than in a panic-bust like we've seen in so many other places in the past. I used to kind of accept the "generally accepted wisdom" that seems to be repeated everywhere on how Canada doesn't have the subprime/bad lending standards that the US had, which is why we'll be ok. But after reading this, I'm not so sure: http://www.greaterfool.ca/2012/02/20/canadian-subprime/

Hey, I've recently discovered Garth Turner's blog. I'm probably the last one here to find it, but just in case... http://www.greaterfool.ca/ I thought it might interest those who want to hear the case for the "big real estate bubble about to burst in canada". If you read his past 4-5 posts you should have a good idea of what his arguments are. He can be a bit over the top, but in general, I find the thesis pretty convincing. It's just impossible to know how long it'll take before there's a day of reckoning (but I'd be surprised if it took longer than 2-3 years)...

So I'm more and more tempted to subscribe to Value Line Small Caps, but I'm hesitating between the paper and just the online version (which is cheaper). I like having the paper to leaf through, but I was thinking that with the new iPad 3 coming out soon (almost assuredly with a super-high-res screen), maybe I could just get the online subscription and use the iPad. So here's what I'm curious about: -Is the 'online' subscription a bunch of PDFs you can download? Is it HTML on the site? -How does it work when you want to go to the page for company #5674? Is there a clickable index in the PDFs or whatever? Do you have to flip pages all the way to page #5674? Any other pros or cons of the online version that you've noticed? Any reason why paper is an absolute must? Thanks!

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/mobile-technology/sorry-blackberry-netflix-has-no-plans-to-support-playbook/article2348827/

Here you go, 1985 to 2001. Hopefully nothing's missing: http://www.mediafire.com/?w1dgwbpek6iww1e Expect racemize to consolidate it all within one file any minute now ;)

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=241177&p=RssLanding&cat=news&id=1664421

I'm not sure what you are implying and what most of this quote meant, but apart from not being an American and from not having any partisan tendencies (I don't think I've voted for the same party twice in a row in the past), I posted this because it had to do with Buffett and might interest people here, because, y'know, they are interested in Buffett. As for the rest: Demagogy (/ˈdɛməɡɒdʒi/[1]) or demagoguery (/ˈdɛməɡɒɡəri/[2]) (Ancient Greek: δημαγωγία, from δῆμος dēmos "people" and ἄγειν agein "to lead") is a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes. In my book telling a public intellectual like Warren Buffett to "write a check and shut up" qualifies. If I had known this would turn into a political thread, I wouldn't have posted it for sure. Political threads kill brain cells.

*sigh* As opposed to what? Unfairness? Yes, government should try to be as fair as possible. If you ask everybody to pay taxes, you should be fair about it and not give huge preference to a certain sub-group (and it's especially unfair if that group is the richest one to begin with). If you want to lower taxes, that's fine, but there's a fair way to do that too. Of course fairness is an ideal that can never be attained, but we should attempt our best, no? This applies regardless of whether you think government should be 1/100th the size of what it is now or bigger. Straw man. I would love to live off my investments too. That in itself isn't fair or unfair. But having a government that asks 15% of me while I make millions every year and asks 30%+ of people who make thousands of times less is unfair by almost any standard. Buffett's proposal is so damn un-radical that it's funny to see how much resistance there is to it. You could have 50 million bucks in the bank and earn 900k a year in income from investments and not even be targeted by Buffett's proposal, yet people feel these super-rich-investors need all the help they can get to defend themselves. Meanwhile, extremely regressive and plain crazy taxes and loopholes are currently on the books and not challenged by these same people. Anyway, this is boring and enough has been said on this topic.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/george-athanassakos/canadas-housing-bubble-this-time-is-not-different/article2347630/singlepage/#articlecontent A few interesting comments on that article too.

Do you think it is fair that someone who makes 80k/year in income pays 30% in taxes while someone making 80 million/year in income from capital gains pays 15%? Buffett doesn't think it's fair. That's his point.

I also fail to see what they contribute to the "discussion" that is the market.

I guess I should have pointed out that I didn't post this because I agreed with it! I just find it interesting to see how outsiders see Berkshire and our investing culture..

I guess that the fact that nobody who says they oppose Buffett here is actually addressing his points, but rather they try to turn it into something else completely, is kind of equivalent to conceding the issue...

The good news is that he could be registered under any name, but we'll all know it's him as soon as he posts :)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204778604577241224279057882.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-23/christie-says-obama-using-buffett.html

If this was a practical problem and Warren was saying "I have too much money, I want to give more of it to the government." the answer would be "write a check!" But from a practical point of view, I'm pretty sure Warren would love to keep all the money for himself. His argument has ethical foundations. He believes in meritocracy and fairness, and regardless of how much waste there is in government (and there is plenty! and Warren doesn't like it!), he doesn't believe it's right that people making millions each year are paying a much smaller % in taxes than secretaries and mechanics. This position isn't incompatible with lowering taxes (or even raising them). It's not even about raising taxes, it's about preferential treatment of some of the very very rich in a society. He's arguing for what he thinks is fairer, and doesn't like to have the guy or girl making peanuts paying a larger fraction of his income than the guy making billions. If Christie or anyone else wants to address that argument, fine. But to distort it into something else completely and then attack that straw man is just dishonest and wrong (well, it's what politicians do).

I don't think that's available in Canada, unfortunately. But I might be wrong about that..

I'm pretty sure that the robots that built most of the electronics and cars that you have used in the past many years have made them a lot cheaper and more reliable than if they had been all built by hand.

You are doing the same thing that Christie is doing.

I'm curious to know where you found it..?

What is Amazon.com's average load time using the tool that you are using?

Total straw man and distortion of what Buffett is arguing for. Buffett has already explained countless times why he's not arguing for voluntary taxes and why it wouldn't work, and he's not arguing that it's just him who's not paying enough taxes, so sending a check wouldn't fix anything. So Christie is not only arguing about something that Buffett isn't even talking about, he's doing it like petulant child.

Here they are: http://www.mediafire.com/?gh3693u6az57nop All credit goes to Poor Charlie.