snailslug

The odd thing in this article is the R0 of 3.5 for SARS. I always thought that SARS didn't become a pandemic because its R0 was low enough that it was preventable. But the R0 of 3.5 indicates that wasn't the case. Does anyone know why SARS ended up being no big deal? Was our test and track just so much better? Did most people already have immunity? Something else? People get severely sick from SARS right away so you could put them in quarantine. Didn't have the problem of many asymptomatic spreaders like COVID.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/kraft-in-talks-to-be-acquired-by-3g-capital-1427238184 Kraft in Talks to be Acquired by 3G Capital / Heinz

Vehicle Miles Driven: Population-Adjusted Fractionally Off the Post-Crisis Low http://advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/DOT-Miles-Driven.php "Young people aged 16 to 34 drove 23 percent fewer miles on average in 2009 than they did in 2001—a greater decline in driving than any other age group. The severe economic recession was likely responsible for some of the decline, but not all." http://www.uspirg.org/reports/usp/new-direction One-way car sharing http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/business/car-sharing-services-grow-and-expand-options.html?pagewanted=1&buffer_share=2b664&_r=0&pagewanted=all

Normally for wesco meetings, you can just waltz in, no credential required. They are usually held at 2pm at the Pasadena Convention Center.

If you were to do this, what would your approach to property management be? I agree that the fundamentals / financials are extremely attractive, but residential property management in particular is extremely annoying, and I'm not aware of any residential property management firms on a regional or national scale that take care of all the tenant and property management issues, unlike in commercial real estate, where this is possible. I'd be interested in doing this, but I want to spend my time thinking about the investment merits, not dealing with contractors to fix a place up.

Urban malls on the rebound http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-commre-retail-20110123,0,2092512.story

+1

Li Ka-Shing of Hong Kong

In Sokol's defense, he's no longer "running" MAE. He's given several interviews where he's said something to the effect of "Greg Abel is the CEO", and "my job is to go and find opportunities" (meaning deals, I think).

http://www.hedgefund.net/publicnews/default.aspx?story=10256 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=azn_i2mJOiuw Ouch.

I believe pretty much every Fortune 500 company has mission critical applications running on...Microsoft Excel and VBA. There is no way this is going to be displaced in the enterprise, when you have so much legacy code, macros written in VBA (and not simple ones, I'm talking incredibly complex ones with tons of business logic), people have all the keyboard shortcuts memorized, etc. There is a huge huge huge amount of stickiness here, and that's why people have not switched to the free StarOffice, etc. Probably less of a pain to switch from Word, but the pain to switch from Excel and Access is horrendous. I have written quite a few of these programs for several different jobs at different companies, so I know that switching to something "free" has a lot of cost. So, the moat may continue for another 10-20 years simply due to the legacy/switching costs. On the other hand, for those small businesses just starting out without legacy code, the free tools are quite attractive.

Can't you spread the risk by buying the puts from different counterparties?

He spoke to this at the annual meeting. He said all 3 successors are currently running large businesses and creating value for Berkshire. If they were to come to headquarters in Omaha, there wouldn't be anything for them to do. He made a joke like, I just finished reading the WSJ, do you want to read it now? It seems like what Warren is thinking is that if he lasts 10 more years, for example, that's 10 less years of operating genius / value creation he gets out of the successor. That could amount to a sizable sum, especially because good managers are hard to find. I think Sokol is the guy, and if that's the case, I don't forsee much of a transition problem, because he's working with Buffett on big deals, so knows the thought process, and MidAmerican already has some other random businesses other than energy (Home Services, the real estate brokerage).

Microsoft if they bought Yahoo would throw away Yahoo search and replace it with MSN search. What they really covet is the traffic so that they can achieve scale in selling ads. That is Ballmer's logic. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120966628366460063.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo