Marco Van Basten

What is your read on the situation? What do you think the impact may be? Thank you.

You mean the president leaving or something else?

The argument that people like Dimon make is that the number of public companies has declined by 50% in the US in the past several decades driven by regulation and costs of being public.

If you carry liabilities on a discounted basis, and duration of your bond book is less than the duration of your liabilities, then the value of liabilities will rise by more than the value of the bond portfolio (assuming bond portfolio = amount of discounted liabilities.)

It is not just Venezuela. There is also Iran, Libya, Russia. Then there are massive oil discoveries in Guyana and Brazil if I am not mistaken.

If you can get access to bloomberg (some public libraries have it), they are available with a week's delay.

Yeah, you'd be speaking Russian or Chinese since either the USSR or China would have colonized you. Oh, and you'd be either dying in Ukraine right now, or enjoying socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Look at USSR and Russia, very strict gun laws and murder rate through the roof. It is culture and nihilism in schools. It is not driven by money - look at educational achievement of poor Chinese immigrants.

We have tried that in NYC for decades, and where is the result? Murder rate orders of magnitude higher than in Canada.

Every 18 year old in Israel carries around an automatic rifle. Now look at homicide rates in Israel vs US or Canada. In Switzerland, until recently, every male I believe had an automatic rifle at home. Look at homicide rate there vs France. What matters are people and not weapons.

No, I disagree. Utilities' cash flow declines sharply in real terms during inflationary times since their earnings do not grow with inflation. You need regulators to approve high rate increases and that is politically unpopular. As opposed to insurance company which can leave the state, utilities cannot move PPE.

Utilities are probably the worst way to hedge inflation. You have historical PPE and you are allowed say a 10% ROE, and in a period of rising inflation, your "real" earnings are getting eroded sharply and regulators won't approve rate hikes to get you to a 15% ROE to compensate for inflation increase.

So I generally dislike utilities, and NG in particular given the management, rights issue and jurisdiction. I would check out AEP if I were you. It seems it has tremendous opportunity in transmission (FERC regulated). I don't own it, but if you like utilities, that's the one I'd take a look. If you need ideas, take a look at AMRZ/ALC/RYAN - I own all three.

Where do you think the revenue growth will come from? Thank you.

Why? WIth all due respect, I don't get the attraction. Thank you.

In general, do you think it is worth paying for Malware bytes on top of Windows Defender, and if so why? Thank you.

With all due respect, paying 21x EPS for a Japanese consumer company seems insane, unless you expect it to double or triple revenues with margin expansion by growing in Vietnam/Indonesia/etc...

I must have missed it, but would you mind showing me where in the report that you quoted there is accounting for Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, food pantries, prisons, schools and other government services used by immigrants. Thank you.

That study is meaningless and inaccurate, and plenty of things that count do not or cannot get counted. I don't have the time to go through it and rip it apart. I live among immigrants, and I can see that they are a massive drain on society, at least in NYC.

I remember reading a study once that stated that highly educated/skilled immigrants to the US were a net positive, while unskilled/uneducated (did not finish high school) were a big net drain. This of course did not take into account secondary impact - lower wages for workers, higher rents and overcrowded hospitals (or if your immigrants are solely nurses and doctors - shorter wait time and better medical care.)

That's not true. At the same time that Fauci and Co as well as left wingers (in NYC a kid could not come into a museum if he was not vaccinated for Covid) were screaming hysterically about vaccinating 5 year old children, Europeans were saying that they saw no benefit. The fact that Fauci & lefties were also demanding that everyone who disagreed re vaccines was censored was in my opinion criminal. Trust is a very fragile thing, and is easily broken. @LC, I agree that then some people say no point in measles vaccine, and that's a tragedy. However, again, Fauci & Co are to blame since they lied repeatedly, did their best to censor dissenting views - the opposite of what a scientist should do, and now people just don't trust what the government tells them. Our government and universities repeatedly either outright lie or obfuscate the truth and then are surprised that people don't believe them.

The science was not clear, as a matter of fact in Europe Covid vaccines were advised against for under 18 year olds. Some vaccines are a no brainer - polio, small pox, whooping cough et all, others (Covid for kids) not so clear. People should aspire to have skills, but not everyone can get a nice degree or a PhD. As for critical mind, very few people I have encountered in academia have a critical mind - most Harvard and Yale graduates that I have met (and I have met hundreds) cannot think critically. That, and zero common sense are a huge problem in my opinion. It seems that there is an inverse correlation between common sense and the number of degrees a person has.

You need to be more open minded. I don't blame anyone for my woes except for myself (the fault my dear Brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves.) I understand however that someone born in the USA who is not very highly skilled will see his wages eroded due to competition from unskilled immigrants and his housing costs increase for the same reason. I also think that vaccination is generally a good idea, albeit Covid vaccines for 5 year olds do not make sense to me. Rather than behaving like a condescending know it all, perhaps take time to think if the other sides' arguments make sense? Oh, and I have a PhD in a quantitative discipline, and an undergraduate degree with honors from an Ivy league school.

Hell, even aggregates are shipped by water (VMC had a fight over quarry in Yucatan) and I think VMC ships from Caribbean.

Insane that after this, Western countries allow millions of immigrants. Japanese & Chinese are so much smarter in this.