rmitz

You clearly haven't read the outpouring of support I've had on this thread and on the "Best Insurance" thread. Why not learn to speak for yourself and not pretend to speak for others? Harry, that's because most people who agree with you but think that your style sucks just keep silent at this point. Talk about confirmation bias.

Right, this is a huge point. MSFT is a bit different in that they've been investing desperately trying to throw stuff at the wall to see if it sticks. Apple has a pretty disciplined approach, but they still have a huge amount of money to work with so the absolute numbers are still quite large. Done properly, there's a huge scale advantage. If you can get your organizational culture to work right...there are huge advantages to being big.

At this point I am looking to sell some physical silver, but I don't know places around here that will give me anything close to spot. Silver and gold are no longer currencies, so it is pretty painful to convert them.

It is true that the tax system is biased on the calendar year adjustment. I could envision better systems, but it's what we have for now. Now, I wouldn't say that 250k should be taxed the same as 1M. That is the opposite of what I said. However, I think it is obvious that I am making the assumption most people do: 250k/yr as a *regular* amount. I was responding to your soundbite with a soundbite. I actually do agree with this point in the abstract., but I think it actually gets more complicated to actually define a system, let alone roll something out. Personally I'm in generation 1.5, and I look around and see some of the opposite. I also want to see more money spent on infrastructure. I don't see having clean running water, safe food, restaurants, roads everywhere (even if they are beat up) as "little". The reason for any sort of redistribution of wealth scheme is based on randomness. First, make the assumption that you could be born anywhere in the country, as anyone. Now, design a tax system and a government.

Sorry, 250k is rich. If it's not rich where you are, that's a choice. The government isn't responsible for your spending choices. The AMT needs real reform. Flat taxes are not the answer. We have computers now--a completely continuous function is the way to do graduated income taxes. Reform, not repeal. We also need glass-steagall back. Yes and no. It's not like universities are rolling in dough. Salaries for stellar administrators often just meet industry averages, and sometimes not even then. Not having universal healthcare is a huge burden on business in this country. Dealing with a variety of different insurance companies is a complete pain in the ass. Most people are satisfied with their healthcare in this country either because they don't use it or they don't know any better. People here cry about "waitlists", but when you have to wait 3+ months to see a specialist, I don't see much of a difference. Sure. What does this mean, though? It's easy to put out platitudes. I'd prefer a slightly different selection here... A completely balanced budget is too primitive. There are legitimate times when you need to spend somewhat more; these times need to be balanced by running surpluses at other times. Now, how do you legislate that?

I do on IB, but it is a little annoying because you have to trade the currencies manually.

Something I was thinking about lately is how planned obsolescence amounts to a kind of extra confiscation of wealth from the purchasers back to the product creators. The fact that the wealth that has been created has an artificial time limit on it seems...not fraudulent, but unethical at least.

Reports are very mixed. I know some people over there (including someone who just went back after the quake) and mostly I'm hearing that things are fine, though they are different from normal. A lot of news reports seem to be sensationalized. I am more worried about the new reports we're getting from our government that feel the situation is worse than the Japanese are claiming, and actual numbers seem to steadily be getting worse. Personally I'm taking it as a time to pause and reflect.

I actually read that they did do this analysis, and that recommendation was actually made at some point, but it did not happen. Unless I'm thinking of a different site, they had some planning for the tsunami, since the generators were behind the sea wall, but they trusted that the wall would not be breached. A little bit of hubris with a dramatic effect.

That is what people thought in aftermath of Kobe earthquake back in 1995. The scale here is not comparable. And suppose it was and this doesn't do anything significant to their economy--then we aren't looking at some kind of economic cataclysm, either. And as I said, nothing is certain.

I am actually thinking that this might be the shock that ends the Japanese Malaise. Rebuilding--if anyone can do that, and do it quickly, it's the Japanese. It could be a massive economic injection. Even the currency depreciation from their monetary printing would probably be a good thing--their currency has been recently been high anyway. It is a testament to the Japanese preparation and engineering that a seismic event of this magnitude has been dealt with this well, though there are always some mistakes. Any loss of life is tragic, but life will continue.

Yeah, I just upped my cash on my retirement account where I can only choose amongst index funds. Had already marked inflows to go to cash a couple months ago. I'm still more aggressive in my taxable portfolio, but I'm watching closely for when I can take positions off the table...

I agree with Myth, but it's true that if you're older you have different requirements, and might want to be slightly more conservative. Personally, I feel comfortable just not being leveraged like I was the last time (I learned my lesson then). If things go down 30% from here, I won't be sweating. I won't necessarily have as many bullets as the people with all the cash, but I'm comfortable with that too. My cash position will be dictated by my ownership stakes coming close to full value and whether or not I can find places to put the money. I may lean a bit more towards arbitrage situations, but I think that's about it.

I think people are also interpreting the question differently. What you need for retirement at 70 is quite different from taking early retirement in your 30s. If you're aiming to retire young, you can go back to work pretty easily if it looks like funds aren't keeping up. You're also probably going to have some other sources of income. Part-time consulting, a small business, etc. All these factors have a dramatic effect on the amount of money you need.

I love the Rice Pudding there!

I looked up a bit, and Bush did propose a bunch of new deferred Roth-like accounts to replace the existing retirement accounts structure, but all of them had contribution limits. I can't find information pertaining to an account with unlimited contribution limits. That doesn't mean it didn't get discussed, though, seems like it would never make it through congress.

I don't think Whole Foods will be willing to colocate in Sears stores which are depressing, grimy experiences. So that would require a ton of capital investment, which Lampert seems to be shying away from at this point. That said, if they did make the investment I think it would be huge for both companies. Sadly, I don't have a Sears or K-Mart any closer than the existing whole foods, but...

Agreed, there's no reason not to have more brackets. 1) We used to have WAAAAY more brackets and people dealt with it just fine. 2) In today's day and age there's no reason just to use a simple graduated mathematical formula rather than brackets. Make it a continuous function and people aren't going to work so hard to figure out when they should start hiding money and such. Wasn't this specifically about the social security money? In which case, we've seen how that works out for people--it's a safety net, not a retirement fund. Berkshire pays a ton of taxes, at generally higher tax rates than many other companies. They don't hide their taxes in offshore subsidiaries (though this is partially because they don't have much overseas, but that's a conscious decision.) If he had continued running hedge funds he'd probably have made far more money, albeit with far more stress.

I noticed that and just went to the "print" view instead, which has it all on one page.

It is shocking that a money market option isn't available. Anyway, the bond funds would have to be evaluated based on the duration of the bonds; if they're all short term or intermediate, loss of capital should be limited. If we're talking a mix or long bonds, I would probably just go with the s&p 500, unless the international fund were in some very specific areas.

Good teachers are worth way, way more than they get paid. The only change I would make is that crappy ones should not be protected by their unions. I'd like to see a more merit-based pay scheme but it's pretty hard to do in an objective, equitable fashion.

The one thing that really surprised me about Shelby Davis was that he really used a ton of leverage. If there had been a downturn towards the beginning of his investing career it could have been a very different story.

Agreed. Also, I just thought we were all sick to death of talking about macro. :)

Like alcohol, the key is moderation. Except that moderation is probably a lot less than most people have in a normal day.

Switching costs, to me, will expose Facebook to antitrust scrutiny, especially after they go public. Facebook is notorious already for doing "one way" imports of data without giving any good way of getting your information back out. I haven't put anything in Facebook that I don't consider public information, and privacy issues will prevent me from ever doing so. Even more scary is that your privacy is no longer in your control--your friends have the ability to expose massive amounts of your private information, so choose your friends carefully.