rmitz

Heh, whereas, I've been doing that with laptops for over a decade. (You should follow a strict "bathroom sanitary protocol", though.) Note on the earlier post; skimming becomes much more possible on the computer when you use the right software. I accomplish similar newspaper-style skimming by using an RSS reader, for example. Everyone will have their own preferred interface; I'm sure the newspaper-copycat interfaces will have a lot of adherents in the future.

And it's not just the labor, it's the know-how. But yeah, I agree with you; if you're working in a very defined space then there is some outsourcing capability. The outsourcing projects I heard of and worked on generally didn't go really well because of cultural differences, as well as issues with communications. They ended up costing more money than just hiring competent local people in the first place.

I don't know what you do in IT, I work in the field too, but $65 seems pretty low to me for a consulting arrangement. It would be almost reasonable if you knew you would get full-time style work, but that isn't reality. A rule of thumb I used to calculate what I'd need for a consulting rate would be to take your current rate, slap on 33% for benefits (true where I work), and then adjust it for a 50% utilization ratio, i.e. double it.

Look, you're just plain distorting the facts. 1) You never qualified that as "federal" anything. 2) Medicare and Social Security don't count as federal taxes in support of federal services now? They aren't part of the "federal income tax", but clearly they are part of the federal tax regime. Sound bites make for good TV (Pretty much all TV at this point is entertainment; you can't make money presenting facts in a responsible way), but while repeating falsehoods over and over again may sway the Hoi Polloi, you'll find us "elitists" are a tougher nut to crack. And keep in mind here you're talking to someone who hates taxes! I would love a smaller central government. Scale back/change the war machine, first of all. We can make all sorts of suggestions, but it's inherently a slow process, and politics make certain things impossible. War, for example, has a HUGE lobby behind it, on multiple fronts.

Actually, just move to Qatar. I lived there for three years. No personal income taxes. The country is run based on petroleum revenues and some minor tariffs and low business taxes. They don't actually need the income from the latter things.

Incorrect. That number is only correct if you ignore local and state income taxes, medicare, social security, etc. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/business/economy/14leonhardt.html

You're right on the year. But when income tax was instituted, and for many years thereafter, the burden fell overwhelmingly on the rich. Initially, it was only on people who by any definition were rich.

I don't think that extreme would be accurate, but you just have to look around you for examples of the Tragedy of the Commons. You don't have to look very far for situations in natural disasters where ordinary citizens start looting and stealing, either because they need supplies to live, or they just feel like it. Will people pay money to fund roads? Some will, enough won't; it would certainly be enough to make a difference. You can go through an entire list of these sorts of things which create a better environment for people and society in general. Accounting for externalities is a huge issue when you try to fully walk down the libertarian path. Suppose someone decides they just want to let the trash pile up in their backyard to save money? Is government wasteful, and does it support things you or I wouldn't? Of course it does. That doesn't mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater.

"social contract". I'm sorry, but I've never signed nor agreed to your contract, "social" or otherwise. You think you can bind someone to a contract whether they like it or not and enforce that with violence? You Be honest. If there wasn't that implicit social contract out there, most of us would already be dead.

You say "Socialists" like it's a bad word. It's not. It's just another system, one I don't really agree with very much, but there are some good points. I've been doing research on historical tax rates lately and I can tell you right now that, for the rich, our rates are historically *extremely* low, certainly relative to the taxes the middle class pays. To a degree, these historically low rates have created an incentive for bilking the shareholders with exorbitant pay packages for average CEO performance.

Sorry, Dad, no deal.

Actually, they don't do that anymore, at least in the US. The only things that count towards the fee are actual commissions, at least from what I was able to determine. In some sense it is, though they should also be able to make money on margin (not very much, though, given their rates). I put together an advisor account so that I could manage several accounts in a unified interface. So far that experience has been somewhat trying in and of itself, and you have the minimum commissions for each account. It's not really targeted for people who have full authority on all the different accounts. All that said, the margin rates are so low that if one uses even a moderate amount sporadically, that should make up for the other fees.

If you have a cash account (this security screams Roth to me) you have to manually convert funds over to GBP using an FX trade, then purchase the security on the LSE. The LSE real time quotes are actually free, but you need to enable them. The forex base fee is $2.50 and up to 50k GBP purchase on the LSE is 6GBP. You can find details here: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/p.php?f=commission and navigate to the appropriate tab. The only thing irritating me lately on IB is that they started charging an inactivity fee on accounts if you don't have a minimum amount of commissions. I may have to reconsider having all my accounts there because I really don't trade very often. Or I suppose I could generate fees with some small-scale arbitrage.

They already have it up. Just go to the "Live Webcast" link and you can listen to it. At least I did that after the call..

Oh, right, pence not pounds. That explains it.

Where can I find the ratio of shares between the pink sheets stock and the main one on the LSE? Nothing came up under ADRs. My personal guess about the company is that they're not a long-term compounding machine, but as an insurance company they smash all the common valuation metrics so should trade at a significant premium at some point. Will look into the numbers.

I didn't have the guts to buy any more on the dip since 1) this is my largest position (bought in the penny-stock days) and 2) it would have required too much leverage. But I definitely smiled when I read this news yesterday. :)

Agreed. This just attempts to put a negative spin on every possible angle; it's a hysterical surface analysis. Personally I think short opportunities should only be followed when companies are fundamentally unsound; otherwise there's too much timing risk. Even when you can make money, surely you can find a better short opportunity?

On Monday I had tires mounted at Walmart. I wasn't unhappy with the service. I had my winter tires pulled off and my summer tires put on. Mounting, balancing, etc... That's even better than I expected, but I had forgotten about winter/summer tires, probably since I had them on separate rims, so I could change them myself. I don't know if they let you drop sip the tires there like most shops would, though.

At least in the US, there's no real problem with shipping to local garages, and they're more than happy to take care of you. I used to order from Tirerack all the time. Obviously you're not going to get a place like Sears or Walmart to mount your tires, though.

Sometimes, the best security really is obscurity.

I can't tell if you're being facetious or not, but no, of course it isn't. However, I'd say that to reduce berkshire's intrinsic value below what's currently priced in by the market price would be quite unlikely. The stock price itself, it's foolish to predict.

Does anyone else think it's odd that Coca-cola and Pepsi would have gone to all the trouble to spin off their bottlers years ago, and now buy them back? They spun them off, I believe, to become a higher ROIC business. So either they see depressed values that they want to take advantage of, maybe contracts have timed out since they were in house so that costs are being raised by the bottlers, or they just don't see other good investments. [All this should be considered pure speculation; I haven't read anything specific].

Who says there wasn't any? It's just not something that really needs to be discussed over and over...I know I bought.

I feel that $100 is a reasonable valuation. An optimistic one (which is probably not unreasonable) could easily be at $120. If I had the option today, I'd probably sell just above $100 though, except for my core position.