rmitz

I rather doubt it given the problems they had with the cross-holdings back in the day with the SEC. They wouldn't want to go down that road again.

In life, everything is a shade of grey. Only people who ignore some of the facts see in black and white.

Actually, it would be great if we could see the author when reading in RSS...

No one is saying you need to be a millionaire. But when you're younger and have a smaller portfolio it does mean that it makes sense to take bigger risks for bigger payoffs--a setback will not be so bad relative to your current earnings.

I assume you are being facetious since this is the Corner of Berkshire & Fairfax Message Board and not Mother Jones. Just in case, corporations are organizations of people. For some reason many in our society actually struggle with this concept. Personhood is basically a legal concept that allows corporations to enter into and enforce contracts, sue and be sued, etc. It seems obvious to me, that taxes on a corporation are essentially taxes on its owners. Why else do some small businesses switch structures due to changes in the differential in tax rates between individuals and corporations? This is, again, a dramatic oversimplification. The biggest argument is that corporations make use of and require different (and larger) parts of government overhead than other individuals. In addition, the *limitation of liability* is key here. It's not *just* a collection of people. A collection of people have no additional rights than the sum of their own rights, whereas corporations certainly do.

If corporations are willing to give up corporate personhood, limitations (often complete limitation) of liability for officers and shareholders, and so on, then you can treat the income on a look-through basis. Until then, they should be considered wholly separate entities.

I think the two most important things for apple are: 1) Keeping people who have a real sense of style, design, etc., and empowering them to make some of the big decisions. 2) Being willing to cannibalize their other products to innovate. I'm not sure this is enough, and I'm not sure they can do this either, but these are necessary for their success.

I think maybe it knows you used to work for MS. :) Honestly that level of difficulty is highly unusual in my experience; here at work they're all far more reliable than the Dells. (On the OSX side, though, you haven't actually done OS upgrades, have you? I've found not doing a totally clean install does lead to issues... also, sometimes it's an incompatibility with the particular router that doesn't show up with the MS code.)

Try an Apple TV if you want a change of pace -- I have to reboot it (unplug the power) time and again to fix it when it stops responding. You should take that one back. You have a lemon.

You're actually also exaggerating here. FBK was never selling pulp at 1040...they are mostly locked into contracts at closer to the current spot price anyway. The truth is somewhere in between...

Au contraire. There would be massive unemployment and deflation if the minimum wage were set at a level higher than current average wages. Where would the extra money needed by private employers to more than double the average payroll come from? When the minimum wage is set at a level only slightly above the previous rate, there is only a very slight effect on current employment. The main effect is a drag on future employment, especially on the young and unskilled entering the workforce and those with rusty skills trying to reenter the jobs market These young job seekers who lack the minimal skills needed to earn the minimum wage then drift into the underclass to gain by other means than employment. It's a sad story of unintended consequences. There's a bit more to the story than that. The main reason that there is some utility in a minimum wage is that the labor market is *far* from efficient. There is an information asymmetry from the employers to the employees; a person would have to spend a few hours working a day just to find the "best" opportunities for them elsewhere. So there's a reasonable amount of stickyness in jobs, and difficulty in finding a new one, even if you are very qualified for it.

I haven't actually read about this yet, but while interesting in a theoretical sense, this feels like a loophole that someone could fly a fleet of 747s through.

I'm willing to join such a group based on this current offer.

It isn't cheating if it's approved by all parties. It sounded like a pretty basic poly relationship setup to me.

The only thing I can think of is overpaying due to the spread. Be careful with your limit order and you should be fine. do I have any risks re selling later, e.g., if I hold for a long time? For example, could I resell back in the TO exchange if the pink sheets weren't around anymore? I really don't know what these are, other than they are OTC. Not a bad question. A full-service broker would certainly be able to handle the conversion of the holding so that you would be able to sell it on the Toronto (or whatever) exchange. Many discount brokers probably can't, but you can easily handle the situation later by transferring your account at that time to someone capable of dealing with the details.

The only thing I can think of is overpaying due to the spread. Be careful with your limit order and you should be fine.

They actually do this already. Except that the rules are so broadly written that you can just invest X dollars in bonds which are used for a project which creates jobs and get the visa.

The macro environment is basically always terrifying. Even in the golden age of the post WWII we had the communists, nuclear war, korean war, inflation fears (gold bugs, including Buffett's dad), and lots more. If you can't find good or great investments at good or great prices, that's one thing. The macro boogyman is another.

FBK has only been around in its current form for not quite a year and a half. If investors can get "very tired" over that kind of timeframe, that says an awful lot about people's attitude these days.

Mark me down as not at all happy with this offer. I'd basically be breaking even here, and I'm sure some traders who just picked it up recently would be fine with it (and people who have equal or more value in ABH), but I'm not.

Think of the occasional trouble we have here. Now multiply that by 4chan, digg, and yahoo. Unless they have some magic, it's going to be a real sewer of commentary.

No, because we've seen Microsoft running without the chief architect for the last five-six years. While Ballmer makes alot of mistakes, and he certainly doesn't have the vision of a Steve Jobs, he is smart enough to keep capex low and share buybacks high. And while Gates isn't involved on a day to day basis, Ballmer can give the largest shareholder a call anytime he wants to get some advice. Also with Microsoft what is the worst that can happen...the P/E compresses from 9 times to 7 times or 5 times? Eventually the market will have to realize that the moat isn't gone, just dented, and that Microsoft's cash flows aren't going to disappear overnight. In Apples case, my opinion is a premature one, but one that parallels Jobs' achievements over the years. He didn't single-handedly design anything there, but he certainly came up with the ideas. You name it and Jobs originally drew up the idea...graphic interface, Mac, mouse, USB, iPod, iPhone, iPad & iTunes. All his! And his relentless pursuit of excellence was incomparable to any other CEO in the modern era. He was Thomas Edison, but unfortunately Apple is not GE. Cheers! I have to point out that this is just wrong. Jobs may have recognized the value of these innovations, but they were there. The key was the application of design principals to make them usable. (Actually, I really don't consider iTunes particularly usable). As long as the recognition of design as being key is there, I believe Apple can continue. They were very rarely a raw technology innovator--this is exactly Bill Gs perspective (though, of course, he wasn't really much of one either). The magic is in pushing suppliers, refinements, and making technologies usable. I'm not saying this is easy, because it isn't. I also don't know for sure if Jobs grafted this permanently to Apple's DNA. But it's certainly possible.

Part of the problem is that companies have gutted most of their training programs, and they don't want to spend the money on that sort of thing anymore. This stuff isn't *that* hard to learn, and it really doesn't require a college degree--it requires strong effort and the will to get through it. The second problem is that since companies have shut most of their internal training programs down, they don't even have the expertise to be able to do it efficiently anymore...but there is probably a real opportunity for people to figure this out.

I completely agree. The point isn't that Jobs win the Nice Guy of the Year Award, it's simply that he pushed technology into areas where it hadn't gone before. These types of arguments are so bass ackwards. It's like when people discuss great baseball players and Ty Cobb comes up. But he was a racist they say. He isn't being discussed for his humanitarian endeavors, but the fact that he was a great baseball player. When people want to discuss the top assholes of all time, then we can discuss whether Jobs and Cobb belong there. In the meantime, their personal views don't detract from the subject at hand. I really appreciate what Jobs did, but to be clear, he never really created new technologies. He took existing technologies and used his team, influence and taste to rework them into beautiful things that the vast majority of people can now use, via a variety of methods, one of the principals of which is simplicity. When the original iPod came out I totally missed how the simplicity and beauty would win over so many people.

That's why the Circle of Competence is so important. Either you know the company cold, so it's inside YOUR circle of competence, or you place your faith in someone like Prem, and hope the business is inside HIS circle of competence. If you ever meet people from BPL, you'll find they're almost always the latter--they had complete and utter faith that WEB was inside his Circle of Competence. I would also argue that there is a significant difference in holding when you have a material impact / influence on the company in question...