yadayada

This may simply be because in a globalized world, these opinions are almost impossible for the mainstream media to voice. Look at Bloomberg, or JP Morgan, and you quickly realize that the world has changed from one of pre-WW1 localized economies to one of worldwide (often lateral) ownership. With that, comes the risk of repossession and retaliation for the smallest of perceived slights. Any real talk of a potential war between China and Japan on the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal would therefore quickly result in huge diplomatic pressure against the US government as well as screws being tightened on News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch personally. More trouble than it's worth, so it's cheaper to not discuss it. That way you avoid the accusations of nationalism, racialism and political interference as well as holding onto your foreign assets and business. If you want to seriously find out more about the odds of a large-scale global conflict, you're better off visiting some looney-tune websites from time to time and sifting through the mountain of crap for the 1 or 2 worthwhile geopolitical insights you're likely to find every couple of weeks... I recommend you read "Guns of August" because ALL of the arguments you made were made before WWI as well. The world was very globalized then, especially Europe. Many rulers were intermarried, there was essentially a ruling family across most of Western Europe. War was thought to be impossible, commercial ties were strong, and the mood at the time was that the world had progressed beyond war, especially a European war. I'm not saying we're heading to a global war, but I'm saying that all this talk of why a global war is impossible is just history repeating 100 years later. We've forgotten the lessons of the past. Now you have nukes. There is globalization. My grandparents rarely left town, and America was a far away place. There was nowhere near the level of globalization you have now. It is also the information age. You need to badly fool a large amount of people to get into another world war now. There is now way more to lose then before world war 1. And there were plenty of people talking about an imminent world war 2 before it happened. I mean can you imagine if you had the internet back then? No way people would have been that ignorant. Living conditions simply SUCKED for alot of people even in the west. We now have more to lose, and easy acces to alot of information.

I believe all of the above (with the exception of possible extinction) were widely believed before both of the major world wars in the last century. Well Germany was really desperate after world war 2 after being milked. And quite a bit of smart people saw that one coming. Havent heard anyone talked about a world war so far. Also world trade exploded compared to world war 1 period. We are much much more globalized, and more well informed. It seems much harder to grab power in large rich enough country and then start a war. Allthough the USA would be a good candidate. China is just too calculated and sneaky to do this.

Net net investing is more turnaround investing. I mean liquidation is expensive and has hidden costs and can take a while. In the end I like to think, when will the shareholders see cash? If the assets will probably decline in value over time, then you want to see cash sooner then later. So because of this you are more banking on the fact that companies can monetize those assets. Often when I see write ups on net nets, I dont see nearly enough focus on this. The only true net net investment I have seen recently is that piano company in New York. I forgot the name. But they had some real estate on their balance state that went unnoticed, and was being realized by this PE firm. But that seems rare. Also in Graham's time, liquidating a company was much less complicated and less expensive. So you are either investing in liquidations, In hidden assets, or in turn arounds imo. And I doubt the basket aproach works that well in all those cases. Liquidations you probably need to know what will happen, and discover all the hidden risks. Hidden value is something you cant really do the basket aproach on, and with turn arounds you need to figure out how the business works and see how likely it is something good will happen.

those guys from the wire should make a show out of it. Or maybe that would be too depressing.

So have we figured out already what that mysterious 10-40 bagger is going to be in the next 10 years ? ;D

30 years in prison, and didnt reoffend once after that, talk about discipline! too soon?

Excuse me if I am completly wrong here, but doesn't buffet use the insurance float to invest with? What would happen in the case of some giant disaster like in san francisco in 1906? Or some other super disaster? Doesn't that have the potential to wipe out buffets insurance businesses and the large float with it? Since Buffet has said that he doesn't really expect to outperform the S&P 500, wouldn't this make BRK a worse investment option then an index fund?

Not sure if it has been said, but secondary markets benefit society indirectly, because it makes the primary market bigger. Without the secondary market, the primary market wouldn't be nearly as big? It basicly provides liquidity and more motivation to take a risk. Since you can more easily flip it if you want to cash out.

I think we are having the wrong discussion here to be honest. I try to be both a bull and a bear. And I see bitcoin as a new technology, not really a new currency yet. Some uses this technology can be disruptive (and why I have my doubts about that) 1. in person payments. Seriously doubt it. I mean it would lower the price for products like 2% at most, and would be higher cost and more hassle vs using cash. There will also be Clinkle soon, which is going to make bitcoin completly irrelevant in this area. So here it will stay a niche thing. 2. Online payments. In europe this seems to be working well already with SEPA, and how many people really are going to bother when they can save only one or two % vs credit cards, or when paypal is still free? You still need to buy bitcoins, or put money on a service that converts them for you. So that would still take one or two days. And who really wants to hold bitcoin with this volatility? And no the volatility could potentially never end, since it really seems like a chicken and egg problem. Bad currency because of the volatility, so no mass adoption for that, and volatility wont go away. 3. remittance. I think this one has potential. Looking at the western union fees, they are like 4-12%. if you send like 50 euros, then it hovers around 10%, and for maybe 300 euros its more like 4%. Bitcoin could potentially make this very cheap. So there is def something to gain here for consumers. But again the problem here is volatility. Google has already set up a service to avoid this. They would essentially convert the currencies using bitcoin and then quickly back to their home currency, and not have the customers be exposed to bitcoin and its volatility. This could work perfectly and cheaply with for example MPesa. BUT the big problem here is, who is going to buy these bitcoins in Africa and India? People throw around numbers like 'omg that is a 500 billion $ market, imagine if bitcoin captures it!'. But there would be about 500 billion$ worth of buyers in those countries, who would buy bitcoins. Other it would have to be adopted as a second currency in those countries. But who will buy them if you can't use them because of this volatility? Local potatoe farmers? For some reason I don't see this happen quickly. And I see almost no one discuss the problem. The bitcoin bulls are all like 'omg yeah you ass that will take care of itself ldo!'. Would love to hear opinions about this from people who know more about currency markets then me. 4. black markets and Silk road specifically I see huge potential here for bitcoin for the online drug trade. As someone who has u.. I mean heard of people who used this, it really is perfect. You cut out the middle man. There is quality control (quality is really excellent, and trust is no issue if you use a large vendor). You don't have to deal with shady drug dealers. And it is completly shielded from law enforcement by this huge wall of cryptography. DPR is caught, but almost no vendors were caught in the process. This is a pretty large market, and this could become huge. Not sure if it would justify the current bitcon price tho. But bitcoin really fills a need here, and is here to stay. Also interesting to note that only a few % of packages were intercepted here in the post office. It seems because of the sheer volume every day, it is impossible to properly check this. Especially if the vendor did a good job on stealth. Regarding bitcoins moat: Bitcoin's moat is huge untill some bug brings it down. There is a transaction limit currently in place of only 7 transactions per second. That problem needs to be solved, and all the owners of computer chips providing the bitcoin moat need to agree on the new number. This is called a hard fork I think. And this could potentially be a big problem. If this is solved then I don't see how other crypto currencies could be a threat to bitcoin. There have been succesfull hard fork's before on other issues... I mean think about it, bitcoin is built on trust and people knowing about it and the huge number of computing power protecting it. It has roughly the same moat as facebook, maybe even stronger. Unless facebook fks up BIG TIME then they are here to stay. We only really need one currency. Especially if somehow bitcoin becomes widely used, volatility will be solved. Making the moat even bigger. So I really think that is not a significant risk here. Regarding bitcoin being in a bubble: You cannot say that just because randoms are talking about it, it must be a bubble. Actually the more people talk about it, and use it, the bigger the odds are that the price will stabilize at some point. Every person using it for something in the long run, adds to the fundamental value of bitcoin. You could compare this to facebook in it's early days. Imagine if you were a VC, or you were mark zuckerberg and it exploded into the main stream. Except now the public is exposed to this, and not just the VC's. This isn't some stock with a fixed value, the value of bitcoin is in it's use and in people knowing and trusting it. Allthough as I have said above, I still have doubts bitcoin will make it. This is also why it is so interesting to follow, since this really looks like a once in a lifetime thing for most regular people. So in conclusion, I think bitcoin really could fill a need to solve innefficiencies. But the remittance market for example could be solved if third world countries get a better banking system. And I am sure there cuold be other ways besides bitcoin to bring costs down here. Those skype guys are doing it in Europe already with Transferwise. I bought some a while ago, and I am really thinking about selling now. And not looking back. If there are any bitcoin bulls here, I would love to here an in dept response why that would be a mistake.