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I'm increasingly looking for places to park cash while also focused on real yield and after-tax returns because my home state (Minnesota) has a high income tax. Just noticed that iShares rolled out a 0-1 year TIPS ETF (ICPI) late last year. Real yield on the portfolio is over 3% presently. I wouldn't be at all surprised if CPI averaged out 3.5-4% this year so you're talking a high nominal yield on treasuries. Main problem is the fund is still tiny. Only $13M in AUM so it's hard to buy anything material without moving the price. iShares also has a 0-5 year (STIP) option but real yield is a bit lower and there is some duration risk albeit limited.

Not accurate. As explained, a citizen can get a copy of their birth certificate, usually for $10-35, give them the County name & City name, parent's name, and your full name. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/w2w/index.htm Some states may require a photo with signature or notarized. It's amazingly easy. You're getting ridiculous again.

Could IDBI be the buyer of the $1.3b in IIFL Finance with its excess capital? Taken with FIH’s stake, it’s pretty close to 50% depending how it’s priced. Also, it’s unclear to me, my apologies, but are you saying IIFL Finance has a stake in Digit? This whole post is really great. It shows how much optionality there is in FIH that is available for more than free.

Dang @cubsfan ! I lived in Epinal France when I was 12 years old! It started as one of those 3 week exchange programs but I stayed for a few months longer and the family I lived with was extremely wealthy. I learned a lot about the finer things in life that stuck with me. Later when the kid from Epinal came to Illinois and Indiana to see our family farm his verdict was that it was pretty shitty

Thank you for that story GFP. We have gone through hell with the State of Illinois DOT trying to renew my wife's drivers license. During COVID - her driver's license expired. She tried to renew a couple months later. DOT told us to bring in her birth certificate. We contacted Epinal, France and they faxed/emailed us a copy - perfect! We take her copy of foreign birth certificate in - NOPE - we will not accept that. After 3 visits, I gave up. This for a renewal of an expired driver's license. But you want to vote in ILL?? No proof of citizenship required - just say you are a citizen! Why would the State of ILL make it a snap to register to vote - with no proof of citizenship - but make it IMPOSSIBLE for a resident to renew their expired driver's license. The answers are obvious.

One great thing about the PCC deal is that Berkshire actually succeeded in buying it. Companies like that are very hard to buy for Berkshire because Berkshire doesn't like to pay up. But you only have to buy a market leading business once and even if it was sub-optimal they will own it forever which is still better than never owning it at all. And some of those disruptions at Boeing and then covid were probably hard to predict ahead of time but I'm sure someone will say they were totally aware of the Boeing culture and saw it coming a mile away... Donegan still runs PCC and he was the architect of the whole merger driven roll up that created it. Berkshire didn't install management, they left the supposed hot-shot in charge of his company. Still seems like there is a lot of room for improvement but overall I'm happy Berkshire overpaid for it vs. never owning it at all. That's my kind of fuck up!

You would be surprised how many people have trouble proving that are US citizen. Some lose their birth cert or don’t know where they stored it. I deal with this quite often because we need to classify each visitor or contractor in my facility and the driving license alone doesn’t suffice. Then comes the passport passport which many don’t have and then comes the birth certificate. In quite cases the visit had to be delayed because the proof doesn’t come in time and after I received proof, I need to get electronic approval. In theory it’s easy but there is a difference a difference between theory and practice. If we had ICE comb some MAGA towns and round up and deport everyone who can’t produce a birth certificate/ passport or proof of citizenship within 48h, we could depopulate vast stretches of this country.

That's what the Orange slices, and pain killers are for .... administered by a pretty nurse, and promises, promises. Lots of bruises and broken bones that need tender loving care SD

PCC is great example of suboptimal execution. I think in those cases , Abel can make a huge difference. Berkshire paid a full price for PCC but tht want the biggest problem 1) They bought a Cyclical high in the business (turbines) 2) Management that they put in place wasn’t good. The scams and Factory fires that @gfp reported are evidence of this. They failed to pivot the business to stronger market like aerospace components. its seems like Buffett lost interested this and the business remained undermanaged. I agree PCC should be worth a pretty penny now provided they can take advantage of the buoyant market and increase the earnings power.

Reasonably fair assessment, from Fortune. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/trump-may-choose-between-endless-080700006.html "The options are to escalate or cut a deal. And I think the [Trump] administration is likely to do the first, see it fail, and end up with the second," Brew said. In the meantime, "We're going to see more fireworks in the next two or three weeks before we see any kind of progress towards de-escalation or accommodation." You might also want to keep in mind that o/g producers will be reporting Q2-26 numbers in about 4 weeks; Q2 commodity prices were high, FCF numbers will be high, and many will also be reporting significant repurchase of outstanding shares. Higher share prices, likely to stay higher for a while. The Q4 mystery is how the US deals with midterm results/disruption ..... Orange Boy loses the senate, but refuses to accept the outcome ... claiming widespread fraud. Hedging via long oil/gas, and a straddle on his sudden demise, makes a great deal of pragmatic sense. SD

yes, I realized that connection after I posted. I am surprised this relationship was never previously mentioned in a report or conference call. Digitide's MFX unit has been the technology backbone of Fairfax P&C carriers since 2002.

thanks. I must not be converting to US dollars correctly.

My son is in his mid 20s. I am not sure if an 11 years would appreciate it.

Oh man I have PTSD from my years of arguing with the Social Security administration trying to get my adopted kid a social security number at 19 years old. I had already secured a US passport from the state department but those idiots at Social Security refused to accept that a US passport was de-facto proof of US citizenship. Finally they just got tired of me showing up everyday to the office and taking all the supervisor's time and gave the kid the f'ing SSN... Don't these new "Real IDs" require a birth certificate? I forget what is required but remember it being a pain.

You are off by a factor of 10. Rs 10,000 crore is just over a billion USD.

Come on already - Americans, born in the United States, need a birth certificate to get a social security card. It's a snap. This is just flat out wrong - all Americans have easy access to birth certificates. https://www.ssa.gov/ssnumber/ss5doc.htm Let's try and stick to the facts.

How old? My kid is 11 and wasn't sure how bad R rating is.

I think Fairfax India will end up buying $415 million of equity in IIFL Capital but only $211m comes from new stock issuance, the rest comes from the public at the same price through the mandatory tender offer and whatever is not tendered but necessary to get them to 51% comes out of the promoter's holdings (Nirmal Jain and one other guy)

Thanks for posting that site, I hadn't seen it before either. Digitide came out of Quess so this is all in the family.

I was doing some work on Precision Castparts after looking at the recent Doncasters IPO and the booming share price of PCC-peer Howmet. It's interesting that Buffett overpaid for PCC in 2016, paying around 14x pretax earnings for earning power that just today is finally increasing past its peak. They wrote down almost $10B of goodwill, got scammed on a German acquisition that was outright fraud, and had a recent major fire that destroyed an aircraft fastener plant. For goodwill impairment tests, they value PCC at around $34 Billion currently - still below the $37 Billion Berkshire paid a decade ago. But if you apply the valuations Howmet trades at in today's buoyant market for all things turbine-related and adjust for the acquisition-related D&A, an independent PCC that traded on the NYSE would trade around $115 Billion. PCC inside Berkshire is essentially debt-free but I doubt a public PCC would find that to be the optimal structure. PCC also basically stopped buying bolt-on companies after their German pipe fitting scam (they won $700m in arbitration after they discovered the sellers had committed outright fraud). This year they bought a tiny company in the UK that does the wax patterns and ceramic core assemblies that are upstream to their castings but it was only 22m GBP in revenue / 6m GBP ebitda. They did shell out $500m on that titanium melt facility in West Virginia in partnership with BHE Renewables, which created a 100% solar + battery microgrid for the project. Anyway - it was just interesting to see that, much like the railroad, the public comps for PCC suggest it would not be available at the multiples Berkshire paid and since the $10 Billion impairment can never be "un-done" its another example of how even assets he "over-paid" for are meaningfully under-marked in book value vs. "fair value in today's environment." Also - don't buy Doncasters stock! Yikes that one is very richly valued and has an awful lot of stock coming out of lock-up at the end of September. Howmet is also very fully valued but they seem very well run with margins above PCC.

While I am familiar with Fairfax Digital Services I came across this site for Fairfax GCC that I never heard of before. The site mentions that they have worked with the Fairfax subs for many years. Is this accurate? https://fairfaxgcc.com

So this is where this might go in terms of AI regulation:

And yes, it is hard for a non-US citizen to prove US citizenship - that is precisely the point. When foreigners apply for and become US citizens they receive a Certificate of Naturalization. Otherwise, everyone born in the US receives a birth certificate. Every State has a Department of Vital Statistics from which a certified copy of one's birth certificate can easily be obtained.

Within the last week or so, I've added to : DANSKE.CPH - Danske Bank A/S [CofB&F topic], SJF.CPH - SJF Bank A/S [ CofB&F topic], & JYSK.CPH - Jyske Bank A/S.

Nonsense. if you can't prove your identity you shouldn't be allowed to vote. There are a myriad of ways to prove one's identity - voter ID card, birth certificate, social security card, passport, driver's license, etc... This would not even be a material issue but for the open border policy we were stuck with.