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Europeans have touted their social safety net and "quality of life" since the 1990s. They have neglected economic productivity, technology, and defense since then and it's no coincidence. The problem is that guys like Putin will always exist and if you don't have defense (or technology/productivity), one day that nice social safety net and "quality of life" will be taken from you (all of a sudden, it's just gone)...just the brutal reality of this world. The time period since the end of the Cold War has been unusual because the U.S. has basically allowed Europe to create a fantasy world that's now going away...

Wealthier yes, but better I am not sure. Europe has a much better work life balance (work hours, vacation) and more livable cities. US has lower taxes , is much more entrepreneurial. I think the bottom 50% is probably better off in Europe, the top 25% better off in the USA and for the the rest depends. I think I can judge this better than most having lived and h sing friends on both sides of the pond and going back frequently. I think the combo of working in the US and retiring in Europe is hard to beat. FWIW, most people going to the Worldcup have travelled to the USA before, so I think some of the stories are a bit staged. Europeans know Amerika much better than vice versa.

Free refills is the killer app in restaurants. Here in the south they even give you a cup and a lid and refill to go.

I tell this to people, the average European doesn’t understand just how much wealthier the average American is. However, I wouldn’t say Americans live better overall, Europeans are mostly seem content to be a bit poorer in exchange for a strongest safety net.

Hey, at least your old man loves you!

I knew Charlie Rose was great interviewer, but I never knew about his website. It is incredible: https://charlierose.com/ I recommend taking a look at it.

It's really great to see, especially how they celebrate the little things like air-conditioning and free soda refills.

You don't even know the half of it

100%. I think the same thinking has overcome our younger generation when it comes to 9/11 as well.

Pretty harsh Blake. You definitely sound like an arrogant little shit!

Yeah, I suspect, at heart, Buffett might have been a bit of an empire-builder, because it seemed to me that, for a thoughtful guy, he reacted too late to the challenges of scale. It feels like Fairfax has made that switch at about the right time if one is trying to maximize shareholder returns. You want the best of both worlds--economies of scale while still having a large universe of potential investments.

Change, you must be the fastest typer in the world.

Trump and the American people are trapped in a dangerous, negative feedback loop with one another. Throughout his life, Trump's entire mission has been to put his name and likeness wherever possible, through any means available. We are talking about a man who, now as president, receives a yearly document detailing how many times his name has been used on TikTok. He must be talked about, shown on TV, and embedded in the brains of everyone around the world incessantly. It is his drive. How does he accomplish this? Through increasing amounts of chaos of course. And at the same time, the American people are increasingly tuning out as the chaos Trump generates begins to scare them. They tune out more and more, which, in turn, causes Trump to push ever harder in his never-ending mission of capturing the minds and thoughts of everyone. This feedback loop will not end until Trump is either out of office or dead, and will likely only increase in its ferocity. I would also like to say that I do not respect the views, opinions, or logic of Trump supporters. It's always funny for me seeing your input because it only ever reminds me of how worthless it is. You are the ones who enabled the dangerous feedback loop I described up above, after all. But this is not to say that you are bad people outside of those beliefs. My dad is one of the biggest Trumpers there ever was. I love that man so much it is indescribable. But I also realize that he is a racist who is highly ignorant when it comes to policy, markets, economics, anything really of macro substance. He is a tribal-thinking ideologue who has fallen in line behind a mass manipulator, as I believe many on this board have as well.

https://archive.ph/j6kgr

On share buybacks, Buffett definitely talked out of both sides of his mouth. He had one line of reasoning for buying back BRK stock... and a completely different line of reasoning when businesses he owned did it. That is not a criticism... it is complicated.

You might want to keep in mind that we're almost at the end of Q2, a quarter where the average crude price has been very elevated. For most, Q2 earnings will be released around mid August. Today, most companies are priced at what the average crude price was, when the war started. An opportunity SD

GOOG

Yeah, at the time, I think it was a no-brainer. Why wouldn't you use a massive bomb you recently developed in a war that already lasted four years? It also was pretty tiny relative to nukes today. My impression is that the controversy only arose decades later, when the moment was long past and people had the prosperity necessary to develop luxury beliefs.

I’m Canadian. No clue on Mr. Lulani!

And who has the lowest price of compute or will have it?

Back in my trading days I looked at these positioning tools of day traders. In almost every case whatever the position was of retail it was inversely correlated with how prices was moving. I checked it back for years. So yes, most retail traders suck, but also, many of them are just fading price rather than going with the trend.

I agree with your Fairfax India example. But I think it's a bit different from Atlas or Resolute. Fairfax set up Fairfax India so that shareholders could invest in Indian companies alongside Fairfax. I have no issue with Fairfax purchasing more shares of Fairfax India from shareholders who wish to sell, but I would have an issue with Fairfax taking out the company to the detriment of shareholders who would have wished to keep the holding. It would not be consistent with the initial promise, so in that way it would not be fair, and it would also make it difficult to trust management if they ever came up with another scheme (like Fairfax Africa, or Fairfax IDBI for instance...) Whereas if someone bought Resolute shares to coat-tail Fairfax's idea, and ended up being bought out at a low takeover price, that's just a risk everyone has to take with any investment and there would be no contradiction with any implicit or explicit prior engagement made by Fairfax, so I don't see anything unfair about it.

I could be wrong but when Fairfax was formed and the "fair and friendly" motto was introduced, Fairfax was not acquiring non-insurance companies and taking them private. I don't believe that started to occur until many years later. The "Fair and Friendly" motto was more in reference to the insurance companies they were acquiring, which was very frequent early on.

what are you f'ing Hawaiian?!