Otsog

Vancouver is going to be faster than Canada, so I grabbed these #'s: http://i.imgur.com/xPffABp.jpg http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/corp/about/cahoob/data/data_008.cfm http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/index-eng.cfm http://www.metrovancouver.org/planning/development/strategy/RGSBackgroundersNew/RGSMetro2040ResidentialGrowth.pdf 35% over 2 years doesn't make sense to me either. Idk if a crash, correction, soft landing, slow down, stagnation or apocalypse are coming. If one of them does Canada looks pretty attractive to me.

No opinion on anything, just thought this was an interesting data point. I read about Canada's population growth in a book recently and grabbed this data from the UN (http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Excel-Data/population.htm) http://i.imgur.com/XuWa1tc.jpg 5th fastest growing G20 country, kind of surprised me some of the countries we were ahead of. Also, a bit surprising just how much faster Can + USA are projected to grow over Europe.

Maybe… But let me give you an example: let’s suppose you own an office building, and after 10 years by a stroke of good luck you get the chance to change its use into a residential property… wouldn’t you say the value of your building is higher now than it was 10 years before? What I mean is that during the life of a building many things might happen that are not strictly related to depreciation nor maintenance capex, things that might affect its value very much. Imo whenever those things are not reflected on the Balance Sheet, and therefore the value recorded differs significantly from the value given by the market, an opportunity arises. Gio I would say zoning is solely a characteristic of land and therefore your change in cash flows from the re-zoning is wholly attributable to the land. Nothing intrinsic about the building changed, but one of the defining characteristics of the land changed drastically. The land should be revalued on the Balance Sheet at market residential property value. Due to the change in use the building will lose some value.

One of my accounting professors always used to call historical cost 'hysterical cost'. IAS 16 allows for choosing between using the hysterical cost and a revaluation model. I don't think people are arguing for sticking with hysterical cost, just that the proper attribution of PPE increases will almost always be due to land appreciation instead of building or equipment appreciation. If you are buying a freehold building you are always buying land + building. The municipality will value them separately. In condo/apartment buildings, each unit will have a unique lot/sublot allocated that provides rights to the land that has been zoned for a multi-family residential property. It's those rights to the land that provide the appreciation, the building will always lose value without further capital investment barring drastic shortages in construction commodities.

If, like me, you are thinking at this moment, "what chance at long-term happiness have I got if someone as funny and successful as Robin Williams can't deal with life on this mortal coil?"...then please know this: if clinical depression was some sort of box you could fuck, work, snort, party, think, or even wish yourself out of, then no one would ever commit suicide. But it isn't like that at all. Depression is a disease. Robin Williams was also unlucky enough to also be an addict, and suffered from severe depression his whole life - we are lucky we had him as long as we did.

“Men lie, women lie, numbers don’t.” - Jay Z

I outsource my 500 daily pages to a virtual assistant. They're really cheap.

Interesting, thanks for looking it up. I grabbed these rough #s from their latest annual reports: Costco 184,000 employees Costco 648 locations 283.95 employees per store Walmart 2.2 million associates Walmart 6,100 retail units in 26 countries 360.66 employees per store

2014 is the 100 year anniversary of Henry Ford's 5 dollar workday, a doubling of the going rate of labour $2.34. $5 today is approximately $120, which works out to $15/hour for an 8 hour day. $2.34 today is approximately $56, which works out to $7/hour for an 8 hour day. Manufacturing jobs were good jobs for the next ~80 years, an honest days work for an honest days pay (labour vs. management is a constant battle, but in general they were). But, at the time, Ford's competitors couldn't match him, Ford was far and away the low cost producer in the industry. Raising minimum wages will always advantage the low cost leaders in an industry and squeeze (and maybe bankrupt) more inefficient operations, making it a political challenge. You will be blamed for driving a lot of mom and pop small businesses out of business. Even though they are just terrible at running a business (see: The Profit, Kitchen Nightmares) or they are unable to evolve their cost structure in the times of globalization and e-commerce. Costco makes so much sense to me, and I am completely baffled by Walmart. Walmart should be aggressively lobbying for minimum wages everywhere they operate. And they should be aggressively public and self promotional about it. Ford's 5 dollar workday meant free front page national advertising for years.

We didn't even have a Stanley Cup thread! Looking forward to this Ned Mex game. GO CONCACAF!

There are AMAs in the Strategy section

Thanks for the post. Just bought for my Dad for Father's Day. I'll have to wait until Christmas to borrow it from him.

You and many others think that, I and many others don't. I think self interest incentives mean that some sets of human beings are better at regulating. It is not an inherent trait some humans posses, it is inherent based on situations. Humans are extremely prone to fraudulent activities under the right set of circumstances, I think relying on everyone to individually regulate themselves in every single facet of their lives would be just about the most inefficient thing that could ever happen, it would be exhausting. Not that the current situation is amazing or anything, just that I think a balance is more ideal. I think the worst situations would be the two at either extremes of the spectrum. Self regulation, self policing is a concept in economics and business. It does not mean 'any human(s) monitoring any human(s) being in any capacity ever' like you are implying.

So are you proposing that Britain should regulate the United States? Because the United States regulating the United States is self-regulation just as much as a corporation regulating its own behaviour is self-regulation. I think he must be proposing that humans be regulated by some non-human species? But as far as I know, all governments have been made up entirely of human beings. Wow, I don't think either of you could be more pedantic if you tried.

Self regulation is an unconvincing argument to me. Humans don't have a very impressive track record with that. We have proven to be pretty good at locating moral hazard and then exploiting it as hard as possible. US Economic Crises with bank failures 19th-21st Century: 1819 1837 1857 1873 1893 1907 1929 2008

Bhopal was tragic. The Bangladesh (and other) sweat shop fires are incredibly sad. I wouldn't really want to consume anything without the FDA/HPFB.

Thanks for the recommendation, that was a great movie. I love seeing that level of dedication in action.

I don't think anyone is under the impression some bureaucratic pencil jockey is going to solve global warming or that's where the resources would be going. Government has a pretty remarkable track record of innovation when it comes to Public-Private partnerships working together to solve science/engineering problems.

Really cool, thanks for posting. Does anyone know of any good books on companies like that during the Age of Sail?

Who would certify that, a CPA or a Gynecologist?

I've been passively trying to find this movie for years. Of course it's on youtube. There is actually an entire montage of Investment Bankers doing due diligence. It is brilliant.

I think you really nailed it here. I have a moral problem with duplicitous practices for the purposes of predation. I don't see any restrictions on freedom here, you can do whatever you want. If society thinks you are a cheater they may change the rules of the game or ostracize you. They are not inhibiting your freedom, merely exercising theirs. Anyone can go start their own exchange and write their own rules. ;D I'd say you're right. Although the wisest folks are probably the ones that never bothered to post in this thread. I need to remind myself more often: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt." There's not much to do in the Arctic, and this is a lot more interesting than CFA studying :D Agreed, I think that is an apt quote for me. I will work on that patience thing Warren and Charlie are always yammering on about.

Oh, market properties. Markets are simply one person selling to two, or two people selling to one. Markets do not require voluntary participation. In almost all cases voluntary participation is required for optimum efficiency so it usually an ideal trait. Equitable information is also almost always required for optimum efficiency so it is usually an ideal trait. The American healthcare market is a perfect current example of a non-voluntary market. When it was voluntary is was the least efficient developed healthcare system in the world. It will be interesting to see the effects of mandatory participation. Putting aside whether we agree or not on voluntary participation being a property of a market that still doesn't prove anything about optimal efficiency. If we never agree on definitions that's fine, but this thread is really about optimal efficiency of markets. I don't find regulation = force = distortion = market break down convincing at all. It happens for sure, but so does this: lack of regulation -> mis-aligned incentives -> predatory participants -> distortion -> market break down. Absolute on either end (laissez-faire or regulatory) is usually disastrous with the optimal utility coming somewhere in between. If our ideal for a market is fixed by definition instead of transitory to seek optimal utility then of course we will start making erroneous generalizations like government = bad without exception, or humans = rational actors. Yes, fraud in a strictly legal sense. If you have a case for how you were defrauded you go to the government and say, hey, I had an agreement with this guy to do such and such and he did something else which I had not agreed to. I gave him money and he tricked me. Take front running. It's clear why front running is fraud. You pay your broker to do a certain job- he does something else to which you had not agreed costing you money. Now who is being defrauded w/ HFT? If you had agreed to purchase a security at a price and someone else came and raised that price without your knowledge thereby stealing from you- that would be fraud. However, when the price goes up from HFT, you know the new price before you pay. There is simply no fraud going on that I know of. The interactions are voluntary. When you see that HFT has raised your price, you still have the choice not to buy. You might not like the new price- but so what? It's not your stock and whoever owns it can offer it for whatever price they want. Don't like it? Don't buy it. You said your defense of HFT is that it is voluntary and not fraudulent. Your interpretation of fraud is in strictly a legal sense. If the government changes the laws or we later find out law breaking was happening, does your opinion change? Pre-FB I think that the public knowledge of HFT was infinitesimal, people weren't aware and it was deceptive. I think it's been shown that even people you would expect to know with decades of experience (Ackman, Einhorn, Loeb etc.) didn't know before Brad told them (they suspected, but didn't know). You haven't done this, but others have insinuated everyone should have known and if you didn't know you were stupid or a retard. The market people were seeing wasn't the real market and they didn't know it. I think FB and the associated media coverage has done an excellent job of presenting the case for public consumption. Only now do people know the market is not the market, the market is not a level playing field, the market is dysfunctional. In both cases we have a dysfunctional market. I love the free market (operating efficiently :)) ) so if Brad can solve this dysfunction through his exchange or the public pressure from the book causes the big guys on Wall Street to institute investor protection it's a lot better than the impotent SEC getting involved. Yes, that was helpful, thanks! :)

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