Parsad

What's also very interesting is that Chano's little forum called CNBC has yet to report any of this story. Cheers!

Bloomberg reports that both Kynikos and SAC Capital had access to John Gwynn's preliminary analyst report on Fairfax before it was published. As we all know, Gwynn was subsequently fired by Morgan Keegan for releasing non-public information, and it was his original report insinuating that Fairfax was nearly $5B under-reserved that stirred the hornet's nest. This gets better and better! Cheers! http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a1gpkAyXa8iw&refer=home

I reminded of the time when the pilots of Singapore Airlines threatened to go on strike. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew responded by threatening to shut down the airline and start a new airline. End of strike; no more labour disputes in the decades since; and SIA is today the strongest airline in the world sitting on $5b cash. This should work for Detroit. This does occur in North America, but it is few and far between. Regan fired all of the air traffic controllers when they went on strike. Walmart and McDonalds usually close a location if the employees succeed in unionizing. While I think unions do serve a purpose for grievances, generally like the Senate and Congress, they simply employ tactics to get what they want added to deals. I guess a free market system is based on the fact that humans are innately self-serving, but sometimes it would be nice to see individuals put their own self-interest aside for the greater good. Cheers!

The home next to Warren Buffett's house in Laguna Beach is for sale. Any boardmembers have $13M laying around? Cheers! http://southcoasthomes.freedomblogging.com/2009/02/12/be-warren-buffets-neighbor-for-13m/

John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, spoke at the Senate Committee on Financial Services. The Charlotte Business Journal has his comments. Cheers! http://charlotte.bizjournals.com/charlotte/stories/2009/02/09/daily37.html

If you guys have any more questions, please submit them. I will be putting together the questions and sending it out to John this weekend. Cheers!

LVLT had a profitable 4th Q due to one-time non-operating gains. http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20090211/LA6941611022009-1.html Interestingly, they are narrowing the spread between revenue and operational costs, especially by cutting G&A expenses. They are probably a year or two away, but we may actually see LVLT become profitable solely from operations. At our Fairfax Dinner last year, Sam Mitchell was asked about LVLT and how far they are from reaching a critical mass. Sam suggested that timeframe was closer to a couple of years, rather than several years. Perhaps, Southeastern will make their money back in the next few years. Cheers!

Charlie wrote an article for the Washington Post. Cheers! http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/10/AR2009021003122.html

Netjets Europe will acquire more small airports over time to improve runway access according to Bloomberg. Cheers! http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aWad_WBhJob8&refer=home

Dear Members, Sorry about the board not being available for the last few hours. I was pretending to be an advanced programmer and added some code to the Simple Machines software installed and corrupted it. I had to uninstall and reinstall the software, then upload the database and make sure everything was working. Don't worry, I won't be doing any more programming! ;D All the memberships and passwords are completely active. You may get an error on the main log-in occasionally, but just reenter your password on the log-in that pops up, and you will have access. If anyone is having difficulty logging in, let me know. Thanks for all your patience, and now you can get back to using the board. Cheers! Sanjeev

Sorry Frog, I was only going by the funds. The managed account results aren't public, so perhaps many people (including myself) aren't aware of them or his performance. Cheers!

Article on Buffett's step grand-daughter Nicole. This is her perspective, but at the same time like the Snowball, I think there is a human element to Buffett we don't always see. Cheers! http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/latest/warren-buffett-granddaughter-nicole-buffett?link=rel&dom=msn&src=syn&con=slide&mag=mar

Ft.com article on value investing. Cheers! http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7b523338-f47f-11dd-8e76-0000779fd2ac.html

Ok folks, I've locked the voting down, and it seems as though the majority has picked keeping the current format for the board. That's what we'll go with. Cheers!

Activist investors Steelhead Partners, have moved in on Abitibi. Cheers! http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/story/GAM.20090209.RABITIBI09/GIStory/

I think it may be because Sprott needs a longer track record. Other than his Canadian Equity fund, most of the funds were started this decade. Also, for someone who had a pretty good idea of what was happening, his funds had an awful year in 2008 like everyone else, except for a couple his hedge funds. The small-cap hedge fund lost 50%! The Sprott Growth fund was down 63%! His oldest fund, the Canadian Equity fund, was down 43%. That's quite a different result than Prem. Cheers!

Students from KU Finance, Creighton, Emory, University of South Dakota, Penn State and the University of Texas had a Q&A session with Warren Buffett. If you have access to the MF BRK Board, Mhirschey has put his post there. Due to copyright laws, I don't want to put the whole thing here, but here are a couple of quotes: Buffett sees things in the financial markets that he’s never seen before, nor did he ever expect to see them. For example, Berkshire recently bought a three-month T-bill that involved a small amount of negative interest. Buffett joked that the mattresses sold by Nebraska Furniture Mart were a better place to put your money. Presently there is a bubble in U.S. Treasury securities. Credit spreads have gone from far too narrow a couple of years ago to far too wide today. Money can be made shorting Treasuries and going long corporate bonds, provided you can play out your hand. “If you were just coming out of school today, would you look for stock-market bargains in the financial sector?” “You don’t get rich by making sector bets,” Buffett replied, “but there are lots of bargains in the financial sector right now. Not just stocks, but bonds and some other financial securities are also cheap. Who would have predicted that Bank of America (BAC) would fall from the 50s to less than 4?” All young people should be cautious about the dangers of debt. He also admonished the students to develop the right kinds of habits, “The chains of habit are too lightly felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” In a joking reference to being hard of hearing, Buffett said he recently told Charlie Munger: “Charlie, we should buy GE at 11.” No response. Moving closer, Buffett said once again, “Charlie, we should buy GE at 11.” Again, no response. Finally, Buffett moved up close and shouted in Charlie’s ear. “Charlie, we should buy GE at 11!” Charlie turned to him and said, “For the third time, Warren, YES.” (Note: Berkshire has disclosed big positions in U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo, and small positions in GE and BAC). Cheers!

Bill Ackman's 2-1 levered fund that invests specifically in Target has lost virtually all the capital it raised in 2007 after being down 40% in January. He has said he will commit $25M of his own money to the fund. Yikes! Cheers! http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN0647717420090206?rpc=44

Financial Times article on Warren and Berkshire. Cheers! http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8667131a-f47f-11dd-8e76-0000779fd2ac.html

Good letter! Cheers!

That's a terrific quote! Cheers!

No, I backed off because I just don't have the resources to battle with them. All I can do is bring attention to those that do have the resources and are fighting back. And there's not too many of them...Fairfax...Overstock...the list kind of ends after that! Cheers!

Wow, what world exactly do these dirtbags live in. If you haven't listened to the Sender-Pelicano mp3, you really should. Pelicano was a piece of shit to begin with, but my God Sender is a real dirtbag! Crazy stuff! Cheers!

After Berkshire Hathaway and Fairfax Financial, our board seems to have a growing following of combined shareholders in Western Sizzlin' and Steak'n Shake, both run by Sardar Biglari. That being so, our first interview for the new board is John Linnartz, managing partner of Mustang Capital Management LLC. Mustang was acquired by Western Sizzlin last year as many of you know. I had a conversation with John this morning that lasted about two hours, but would have easily gone on for several hours if we didn't have to work. After talking to him, I knew that John would make a terrific candidate for our first interview and he gladly obliged. In the 2007 Western Sizzlin' Chairman's Letter, Sardar described John and Mustang as such: I met John a few years ago at a Christmas party held by an accounting firm servicing our respective investment companies. As two value investors, John and I naturally gravitated to a corner to discuss pink sheet stocks. His knowledge is impressive; as a sample, I gave him a few facts about a certain stock, and he identified the company simply through my sketchy data. The next time I saw John was last year in New York at Western’s annual meeting, as he then was one of our largest shareholders. Several months later he asked for a meeting and broached the idea of Western’s purchasing his business, a proposition I immediately embraced. To John, price was not the primary factor; rather, he wanted a good home for his business and also wished to continue running it. His investment record, founded on a very stable client base, is phenomenal. He will continue to operate his business as before. Mustang's investor base is only ten families deep, and they've known him for a very long time. Many of them got to know John when he was a stock broker, and have been with him since. He really grew his book of business in the early days by studying and investing in local community bank stocks, and where he also got to know Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf. He bought his first share in Berkshire back in 1987. John is not interested in raising any more funds for Mustang, and is more interested in taking a more activist approach. This being a period of distress for the financial industry, I thought John's expertise in banks, in particular those in the State of Texas, is probably unparalleled. He has no MBA, CFA or business degree. He has a hard-nosed approach to business using common sense as his guide. He gives very frank assessments of things, so I thought it would be particularly useful to those exploring the financial industry these days, as well as giving you all more color on Sardar, Western Sizzlin and Steak'n Shake. Please submit your questions on this thread, and I will compile them and submit them to John. Naturally, there will be some questions he will not be able to answer due to confidentiality regarding Western Sizzlin, Steak'n Shake, Sardar or Mustang Capital, but feel free to submit what you want, and he will answer the ones he is comfortable with. Cheers!

A few months ago, when I started my heated exchange with convicted felon Sam Antar regarding Overstock.com, a fairly well-known investment manager called me out of the blue. I did not have a regular relationship with this manager, but had met this person in Omaha a couple of times. This manager was concerned for me and said that I should be careful engaging Sam, because they were very good at what they were doing and were very well connected. This manager genuinely just did not want to see me get tangled up into something. So, as unimagineable as Mark Mitchell's scenarios seem, many of the alledged relationships he's throwing around are not nearly as far-fetched as they might sound. Cheers!