ExpectedValue

They weren't forced. They had taken TARP money, as a result they had to cede some control.

He's the CEO. He's supposed to be a cheerleader for the company.

I just skimmed the ARs back to 2001, the word "far" is always emphasized.

I think though, that as value investors it's important to take price movements into consideration when looking at banks. Normally, we're quick to reject sharp downswings in prices when we look at businesses, especially when we have an idea of what intrinsic value is. But banks on the other hand are a bit different, downswings in a bank's stock price can affect the confidence behind them, which is inherently a driver to intrinsic value due to their deposit base.

can anyone post a link to the original WFC analysis?

Sanjeev, an RSS feed would be like a newswire of all the posts in the forum as they're made. Usually the user hits refresh and it will automatically update grabbing the most recent posts. The reason someone would want an RSS feed to the forum, rather than visiting the forum daily, is that they have services like Google Reader which allows you to add a bunch of different RSS feeds and keep track of them in once place. So potentially, a user could be receiving new posts here (forum RSS feed), alongside new stories at the wall street journal (WSJ RSS feed), and 10-Ks from the SEC (SEC RSS feed) Check out an example feed - use the following in the address bar of your browser: feed://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/feed/

See the following line - "A Federal Reserve official warned that if Mr. Lewis did so and needed more government money down the road, Bank of America could expect regulators to think hard about their confidence in management." The fact that they had already received government money kind of undercuts the argument that a private company was coerced into action. Taking that government money was obviously going to cede some control. And if BoA was a completely bulletproof institution, they wouldn't have needed government money in the first place. So it's likely that they had pre-existing problems before the Merrill acquisition.

The fact that private capital is staying off the table should be one of the reasons for the US to hurry up and engage in a nationalization plan or some kind of "bad bank" plan because from the looks of it, unless the bad assets are taken are of we'll continue to see private capital sitting on the sidelines.

To me, plans like this boil down to - shareholders get all the upside while taxpayers have all the downside. It creates poor incentives and encourages moral hazard.

http://idea.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/915191/000090956709000145/o53646e13fvhr.txt looks like a few new holdings: Alcoa Burlington Northern GE Intel Kraft Magna International Progressive Corp Viacom Wells Fargo Wesco Financial

I really think you're freaking out over the rhetoric involved in using the word "kill" rather than risk. Here is a quote from Berkowitz about "killing ideas" Its simply a manner of looking at risk factors and how they can affect the company's value, dirty bomb (terrorism) and recession, stagflation, zooming interest rates (economic conditions) are both possible risk factors named in the company's 10-K.

JackRiver-- I don't know why you're having a misunderstanding. Maybe it's because of the rhetoric involved with the term "kill". It's just a phrase. Perhaps you would prefer calling it "risk factors", all it simply means is looking for whatever types of events that can occur that would hurt the company's intrinsic value. The company's 10K outlines a number of potential risks that could be in store for them-- a decline in economic activity could hurt, as there would be less of a need to transport some of their good around (especially metals/materials used in construction). But you could counter-argue that it's likely that with the stimulus package, we'll see a need for such goods. Maybe you could look at their agriculture commodity transport business. After all, agricultural commodities are off their highs. Does that mean that BNI will have less to transport since farmers will now have an incentive to produce less? I agree with Nick though, BNI looks like it has good long term prospects. It's tough to see much of a downside in it, but it's useful to try to ill the idea by looking at possible risk factors.

via WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123457165806186405.html?mod=testMod The giant stimulus package that cleared Congress Friday includes a last-minute addition that restricts bonuses for top earners at firms receiving federal cash -- including those that already received it -- more severely than the Obama administration's previous pay limits. The most stringent pay restriction bars any company receiving funds from paying top earners bonuses equal to more than one-third of their total annual compensation. That could severely crimp pay packages at big banks, where top officials commonly get relatively modest salaries but often huge bonuses. As word spread Friday about the new and retroactive limit -- inserted by Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut -- so did consternation on Wall Street and in the Obama administration, which opposed it... In contrast to executive-pay rules announced recently by the White House, those in the stimulus bill -- which cleared the House and Senate Friday and is headed to the White House for President Barack Obama to sign into law -- doesn't apply just to top executives but could reach into the ranks of highly paid traders and department heads. The rules apply to any company that has received aid under the bailout program since it began in October.

whoops. I just re-watched the video on youtube. I believe Pandit's comments were actually referring to the underwriting fees associated with FDIC backed bonds.

Really? Because a few seconds later Pandit described what she was talking about -- the underwriting of debt related to the TARP

I think the problem with the Kindle is that it's just a device that is too reliant on one single function, especially for its cost. You can pay $350 for a Kindle, or you could pay the same price and suffer a little (with having to use a normal screen) in order to gain more features -- like with the iPhone or even iPod touch. It's a trade off, but I see it as being a big reason for limiting the Kindle's market growth. I think that the Kindle will stay with "hardcore" users for a long time unless the price drops ($100-$200) It still lacks a number of key features, like color -- which will inhibit its use for replacing things like paper magazines.

Do you think that with credit being less available, activism will become harder? Esp. with respect to using strategic transactions to unlock hidden value. Do you see activism shifting more towards making operations more efficient with a focus on cutting waste?

Yeah, that would probably work Sanjeev.

Basically, I think Mark is suggesting that you take a few measures on this board to include "Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders" in places on these forums. For example, the sub-Board for Berkshire Hathaway could be called just that. The title of the overall board ("Corner of Berkshire and Fairfax") could also say something like formerly the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders board. The idea is that a search engine will see "Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders" on the new forums and add that to their search results index and gradually this new board's address will come out on top of search results rather than the old MSN one.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123362438462541941.html

Great work Sanjeev!

Full article: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aIggI1hkembU&refer=home