Luke

US capital definitely behind the slandering of China, pushing the media both domestic but also in europe to publish more and more "china danger" articles. https://youtu.be/DjjND_ky6t4

The Illusion of "free market capitalism" is bursting. Every system, both US/West and China have had state capitalism all along, industries like TSMC or Airplane manufacturing only exist due to state backing. China of course with a tighter grip, US due to monopoly position of course in a looser grip, preaching IP protection and the state doing the minimum. Well, China can do it too and successfuly, now "adhering to the free market" becomes important for the industries to be disrupted. Exciting times.

The author of the article also did not include the dividends in the Berkshire Fairfax comparison, there was one comment about it: You exclude the nearly $125 in dividends paid by FFH over the past 13 years. Adjust the book value to account for the dividends and the returns are: 5 year = 8.1%, 10 year = 10.4%, 15 year = 9.7%, 20 year = 15.3%, 25 year = 17.4%. Now the comparison to BRK doesn't look quite as impressive. FFH outperforms BRK in all categories except the last 5 years.

If one wants to see why many could be hesitant about Fairfax and which past mistakes @Viking sometimes refers to, this looked like a decent write-up: http://azvalue.blogspot.com/2014/04/fairfax-and-their-bets-now-looking-in.html?m=1

It's funny how they still manage to market them holding cash as something "wise" or smart. Opportunities every single year but thats hard to admit. Its always possible to use the punch card buffett argument and to delay the "one huge swing". Returns are around the corner!

0 Cash, fully invested. Can still find decent ideas in the market.

Whats remarkable to me is the low volume of FFH shares, 31k of average volume, Berkshire would need to buy 60 days straight of all shares to get to a reasonable 1.3b USD position. If even possible, shooting up the price. Talking about available universe of stocks...

Isn't avoiding value traps the goal for anybody in investing? Difficult to find the sweetspot, quality and growth for a good price. But those plays do come around from time to time.

Thanks for sharing!

Okay, i misunderstood, of course they dont. Yes, tax loss carry forward is a good thing.

I read that it's possible to reduce expenses down to around 1k if you do the books yourself, which I saw is legal? What matter is if you are young enough that the taxes you save are so significant over the long term. Agree with the rest. How much more than 25% is it when you liquidate the holding? Is tax loss carry forward not the base case?

Thanks a lot for the send @Viking! Is a very good watch, the CCP is brutal, regulations with no questions asked. Their legal system has many errors too, recently watched something about the kids who were born as second child when the one child policy was still intact. They have no passport, can't leave the country, the court doesn't do anything. The local governments don't do anything either and are in some cases even corrupt, collect high fines although the legal situation already changed. They, too, have many problems and can be evil too.

This is what you wrote. I understood you meant china has been using covid as an uncontrollable biological weapon? Weapons are used against enemies, in this case I assumed the West.

Yes, i wrote that they stopped people from investigating. You are talking about biological weapons and releasing a virus against their "enemies" (while virtually harming themselves maybe even more)

You are willing to pick one atrocity the chinese did to make a case that China is horrible while ignoring all the other cherries of horrible acts by the US government. I also have zero problems with americans, i was talking about the people in the US government. Never said those two are the same. If you really believe there is NO freedom in China i completely disagree, in fact, i see chinese people everywhere and they are not telling me what a horrible country it is and how opressed and suffering they are. This is the china thread, right now the sentiment in western media almost NEVER points out something where china is doing something good. China is a threat, china is doing this bad and this bad. You tell me if it's biased! I am just sick of not actually having a factual discussion about what they are actually doing good and what's positive about china. That the US is the greatest country in the world, an investors heaven etc is pretty mainstream opinion.

Lack of basic freedoms? I see Chinese citizens all over the world, traveling, doing happy selfies etc. They too have state capitalism but with a state that accepts and does more regulation. Demographics are an issue i agree, will monitor it closely. World best talent wont move there but spawns inside. And yeah, i think with all the hate against China, Chinese people don't feel particularly good in the US, didnt even Li Lu sponsor some foundation that fights against racism against asians?

Outsourced manufacturing to the disadvantage of the average American worker (rust belt), financial sector that controls more than half of the world's economic productivity, more hedge funds than stocks in the US, own real citizens not getting wealthier, increasing political instability and extremism...they can't even compete in manufacturing anymore due to higher costs. Now if the factories are gone and industrial Asia starts developing their own superior products and starts exporting: Washington goes to war!

So China builds military bases close around their country. Look at where the US has military bases, everywhere. And they will threaten anybody who builds bases around them. And common man, abortion death squads, you cherry-pick one terrible thing of china and as I said, completely ignore US history and atrocities. This week, the non-profit National Security Archive, along with the National Declassification Center, published a batch of U.S. diplomatic cables covering that dark period. While the newly declassified documents further illustrated the horror of Indonesia’s 1965 mass murder, they also confirmed that U.S. authorities backed Suharto’s purge. Perhaps even more striking: As the documents show, U.S. officials knew most of his victims were entirely innocent. U.S. embassy officials even received updates on the executions and offered help to suppress media coverage. While crucial documents that could provide insight into U.S. and Indonesian activities at the time are still lacking, the broad outlines of the atrocity and America’s role are there for anyone who cares to look them up. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/the-indonesia-documents-and-the-us-agenda/543534/ If one points out the hypocrisy, you only hear "oh my god" "Putin lover" "communist" "CCP sheep" Whenever the US does mass murders or tortures prisoners, its fine. When China does it: Nuke them now and take away their factories+stop sending them technology!! China is fine as long as they produce American iPhones, as long as the dividends from Apple flow into the fat financial military district that the US has become!

Thanks a lot for sharing @zippy1 I fast read through most of the sections, as expected the basic line is again: He wants what's good for the people and for the country. Also, the section with focussing not on just economic growth and development but also on good development, is miles better than what's happening in the US. If something harms the economy and the majority of the people, the CCP will ban and regulate it, no lobby, no questions asked. Might seem scary, but just look at the awful healthcare sector in the US. The massive control of businesses over congress, etc. Sure, the US is the most pro business country there is and it's a great place to invest, but stock market and economy are two different things. What about wage growth for average joe? What about diabetis medication for average susie? How do the citizens feel? Where is the wealth of the nation? How gated are the communities? I said it before, the huge inequality of where the wealth flows in the US harms their economic growth, political stability and sustainability. China knows that pressuring wages are stimulative for technological development and efficiency growth, they know that inefficient monopolies harm the overall economy and quality of life. Stock buybacks and dividends only get you so far.

Okay, so China will attack Taiwan and the US will deploy all their naval forces there? China can fire with all their missiles and both parties will be so severely weakened, Taiwan probably destroyed, the economy with it. What's realistic here? Most businesses will go down the shitter, severely. Inflation will be on unseen levels, so will be unemployment, huge depression for many years. Chomsky even went as far as saying if there is a war between china and the US "we are finished". Who would escalate it to that level? The US? Who wants this war? Taiwan invasion is off the table for many years, military war is off the table per se. All they can do is some trade war and stop sending their machines, so what, China has access to TSMCs chips, they are spending much on research and i think its possible they come up with their own semiconductor champions.

Its just not the truth and so one sided, China has proven their danger to the world with what? Having a lab accident and not allowing foreigners to do research there afterwards? They suffered their fair share of Covid 19 too. Everybody talking about the "China threat" but what does that actually mean? Who is building military bases all over the world? Who is invading foreign countries under whatever reason? If China would do 1/10th of what the US does theyd be viciously attacked and the whole western media apparatus would bang out one negative piece after another. Uncontrollable biological weapons lol...i can only laugh about that. The US may as well hide Aliens in Area 51 too attack the russians with that soon. Western investors have a complete bias against china and a blind eye for problems with and in the US. I am also not apologizing for china, all I want is to have a neutral view on the developments that are happening and to actually understand what's going on.

Disadvantage: It’s not just scale that places the United States at a comparative disadvantage in infrastructure construction. China is better at building, not just domestically but across the globe. Chinese firms dominate the competitive procurement of leading infrastructure lenders such as the World Bank. They won $2.3 billion worth of World Bank–financed infrastructure contracts outside China in 2020, compared to the United States’ $27 million worth of contracts. Of the 20 largest construction contractors, 14 are in China, six are in Europe, and none are in the United States. China owes its dominance partly to government subsidies, but on balance, that’s a good deal for developing countries who are effectively receiving handouts from Chinese taxpayers. U.S. policymakers may claim that Chinese subsidies are unfair, but those complaints will fall on deaf ears in the countries that benefit from China’s largess. Anxiety: But the gravest flaw of B3W is that it appears to be based on the very model of self-dealing capitalism for which the U.S. government has condemned China. The main components of the Biden administration’s strategy for competing economically with China involve subsidies to American companies. USAID spends most of its resources buying goods and services from U.S. firms. The Bipartisan Innovation Act would also provide billions in industry subsidies to ramp up U.S. semiconductor production. Worse, the U.S. response is being copied by its ally the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is redirecting aid spending toward programs that use “world-class British expertise,” as the British Foreign Office generously described the approach as part of its aid strategy this past May. Perhaps other G-7 members will follow in their wake: certainly the European Union is looking for ways to disburse billions in subsidies to European firms planning to invest in developing countries. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2022-06-22/america-shouldnt-copy-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative?check_logged_in=1&utm_medium=promo_email&utm_source=lo_flows&utm_campaign=registered_user_welcome&utm_term=email_1&utm_content=20230707

+1 We can only see what happens, I think he will run the country just fine, long term. How likely do you think is this scenario, a full-blown military war between the West and China? That would be another World War but with economic consequences of epic proportions. Which stock won't go down if the rockets start flying into the cities, It's also not like Ukraine Russia, they have nuclear weapons...it doesnt make any sense for either the US or China to fight with the military. China is a huge threat because their economy is and will be much more competitive than any other, they are hard working people, they are at the forefront of science: https://www.science.org/content/article/china-rises-first-place-most-cited-papers, they have their manufacturing in the country and didn't outsource it to some foreign country like the US. Its obvious why they get so much hate, they are a threat for all the business owners in the west who benefitted from cheap asian labor while resting on little competition. That changed and will change harder.

@cubsfan Why would China unleash a Virus into their own country, killing 100k chinese people, seriously harming their economy, risking huge protests against the government. It doesnt make any sense it all, yeah maybe it was a lab error but that this was a Intelligence Operation to harm the "world" is unsubstantiated and a crazy claim. Although the US likes to throw these words around to make other people afraid of china, worked pretty well in their favour.