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LewisBraham
Hi Hank,
Your satire came across very well. Don't worry about the user name.
Best,
Lewis
I find it hard to take any measure of freedom--a nebulous term at best--happiness or economic well-being from the partisan Heritage Foundation seriously. It would be like taking a study from the Workers World on the same subject from a left-wing per…
@pcallum001 Somehow I feel confident centuries hence no one will consider Herro the next Galileo. Also, as I've already stated in the information age one has no choice but to defer to experts unless one is completely delusional or an inveterate liar…
@pcallum001, You're confusing commenting on a topic as a putative expert, which I did not do, and commenting on someone's comments on a topic, which I did. I fully defer to the experts on climate change, 97% of which agree climate change is happenin…
At the last shareholder conference for Sequoia, there was an interesting discussion about Valeant:sequoiafund.com/Reports/Transcript15.htm
Here's an excerpt:
Question:
I guess it is no surprise that most of the questions are about Valeant. So I wil…
OJ, Try this: https://google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=david+herro+climate+change+ft
David, Actually, I don't question Herro's skills as a money manager. He has a great track record. But that's part of my point: There are no real Renaissance men any more a…
Correct link is: ft.com/cms/s/0/0e2d8438-7777-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c89.html
Yet another example of someone out of their element talking about a subject they know little about. Herro has a Master's Degree in Economics from the University of Wisconsin. …
If you include wealth-transfer programs like Social Security compared to other countries social welfare benefits, the U.S. does not rank well in how it treats its poorest citizens:
slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/01/05/america_s_poor_vs_the_rest_of_th…
Comparing a superpower like the U.S. to Greece, Portugal and Chile, which regardless what the OECD calls them, are really developing nations or in Greece's case a devolving one doesn't make much sense. But besides that, household income is only one…
The other elephant we've left out of the labor equation is of course technology. Think about labor as a consumable good and the entire world's population as the available labor pool, which, thanks to globalization, it now is. Well, the supply of lab…
The problem in a nutshell: Capital is global today while labor remains local. If the cost of labor locally becomes too high, capital picks up and moves to some other cheap labor country. So the miracle of globalization is wholly one-sided. Unless la…
They may not have launched small or micro-cap ones because they don't want to cannibalize their existing business. Also, trading may be more difficult with less predictable flows for an ETF than a mutual fund only advisers can buy.
I have to agree with David regarding ACA/Obamacare. It has improved the lives of many formerly uninsured people not to mention parents and their college-age children who used to get kicked off the family plan at age 18 before the new law. There are…
COAGX is very streaky. So if you want to own it, be prepared to own it for a long time and expect that it will have periods where it will do nothing and then suddenly do well. It can be a good diversifier if you have the patience.
@ Dex and David, The problem with any analysis is what is known as "dark money" in politics. If say the Koch Brothers decide to give $10 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to smear Clinton or George Soros gives $10 million to the Sierra Club to…
@Scott Gaffigan's pretty funny. I'm not a kale lover either, but there are plenty of other vegetables that cooked right taste delicious.
@VintageFreak, I think class really plays into this. It's one of the reasons I find celebrities who talk about …
@BenWP As I said above, I don't think it's the price of food in general that's too cheap, but the price of unhealthy government-subsidized foods with corn syrup in them. Why for instance after so many years can I still buy a Little Debbie cake for a…
Buffett certainly has some unsavory aspects to him. He's also been party to the Heinz acquisition which has cost a lot of people their jobs. That doesn't mean he lacks good qualities, though. He's a human being like everyone else. In fairness, he re…
Sequoia has made a ton of money long-term off Valeant. A larger question is whether one should seek to profit off a company that's business is essentially being a corporate raider and tax evader. This explains why Valeant has been so successful:busi…
@MJG, Thanks for the research, but I disagree with your conclusion: "In the USA, the poor have sufficient resources and prices are low enough such that overeating, with all its embedded problems, is feasible." It is not really how much they're eatin…
@little5bee, Me either, but I imagine some people probably feel the same way about marijuana and cocaine, but they get thrown in jail for it. And again, it raises the question if it is Americans' personal responsibility and choice to be thin, what i…
@little5bee, First, watch this: cbsnews.com/news/is-sugar-toxic-01-04-2012/ Of particular importance is the info starting at the 9:45 time slot on the video. Second, I am familiar with the familiar trope about "choice" and "personal responsibility" …
@little5bee Aside from the portion size, which is large at many restaurants, the problem is corn syrup and sugar are highly addictive, some scientists argue as much so as cocaine. Worse, unlike illegal drugs, people need to eat so you can't just wal…
@MJG, Watching the debates is not equivalent to scientific data collection anymore than going to the circus or watching an ad for laxatives are controlled experiments. There is science and there is rhetoric, two highly different disciplines with one…
@MJG, What were your thoughts on John Kerry and George W. Bush in 2004? Kerry was a decorated military man with three purple hearts and silver star medals. I know he was attacked in the Swift Boat ads, but then there was evidence that both Bush and …
@hank Some fund companies are more willing to subsidize a small fund than others. This is worth knowing before you buy if possible because those shops that liquidate small funds too quickly without really giving them a chance can be a nuisance for i…
@MJG, In your list of your presidential votes, you conspicuously left off all elections since Reagan? If you don't mind my asking, is there a reason? There's been a lot of years and elections since then. So have you oscillated back and forth betwee…
This is measuring the percentage of household income spent on each item, not how expensive each item is, although that of course factors into it. Poorer nations like Russia and India will spend a greater percentage of their income on food because th…
While it is a serious business, it's hard to take the debates seriously as mostly politicians just spout soundbites. I would suggest reading about the candidates as much as possible instead, finding out what their actual record is on different issue…
Perhaps the most interesting part from a MFO/investor's perspective was the sparks between the Donald and Carly about their respective failures as business-people. Trump first accused Fiorina of driving Hewlett Packard into the ground with the Compa…
@David, This article gets at what I'm talking about: businessinsider.com/america-is-not-drowning-in-debt-2013-4
I wish I could read the report the article references, but you need to be a member of Capital Economics to do so.
@Anna, your post expla…
I find these constant discussions about our debt as a percentage of GDP rather maddening for the following reason: Suppose you were a lender and someone came to you looking to borrow a 10-year $100,000 loan at an interest rate of 2.5% a year. They c…
