rkbabang

Can't I have a third option? :) Sure. Of course the truth is always somewhere in the middle, but I believe it is much closer to one extreme than the other.

Yes but the fact that things are never equal is really really important! In addition, context matters a lot! I doubt that you ever use such a generalized approach when you look at stocks All true. But ask yourself, has the fed been acting more like BRK (almost never issuing stock, only on a rare occasion to make a large accreditive acquisition) or more like some penny stock company run by a scam artist?

If you define inflation, the way the Austrian economist do, as an increase in the money supply, then there is no question that there has been a lot of inflation. And while it is impossible to calculate exactly how much this has led to an increase in prices, due to the impossibility of calculating the effects of productivity changes, technology changes, consumer behavior changes, supply and demand changes, etc. It is easy to know that it does have some effect and that all else being equal (even if they never are) prices would be lower in its absence. Consider what happens in general to the price of a stock when a company issues a lot of shares vs. when it buys them back.

Global Income Inequality by the Numbers: In History and Now "The period between 1988 and 2008 witnessed the first decline in global income inequality since the Industrial Revolution..."

Universities With the Largest Financial Endowments Harvard Salaries by the Numbers

+1 I was going to write almost exactly what you did. I wouldn't leave my wife if she wanted to go back to school and accumulate debt, but if I was single I'd steer clear of that situation. There is no need to saddle yourself with someone elses baggage.

It isn't about "worth" or "respect". I respect janitors, but they usually don't make 100K/yr. I don't respect many professional athletes yet they make much. What is a teacher worth? Just like with any other job, you are worth whatever the market will pay for your skills.

Not to argue that too much money is spent on foreign entanglements (as it is)...BUT there is a LOT more money spent on education in this country than is spent on the military. Think about all the property taxes, all the lottery money, all the private tuition, all the student loans going towards education, and you will see that it is MORE than what is spent on the military. It is an easy number to miss, as most of the money is spent at the city and county level and is very dispersed. As for national defense, almost all of that is spent by the federal government, not states, counties or cities. I agree, which is why I put that first and listed the military as an after-thought. The entire house of cards rests on the mistaken notions that government (i.e. violence) is somehow necessary to educate children, protect us from crime, protect us from foreign invasion, print money, build roads, and fight fires. In that order. Education is the biggest by far.

That is awesome. Many times when I suggest to people that schooling is too important to be left to government they come back with things like "the poor kids won't get as good an education as the wealthier kids". Where as the way it is now, poor kids get little to no education at all, and with a few exceptions the wealthier a district is the better the educational opportunities there are available to the kids. Under the current system you and I get to send kids to top notch schools, while poor kids get sent to these hell holes where they don't learn anything and their lives are in danger everyday just being there. The rich, middle class, and poor alike would all be better off than now if the government just stayed out of it altogether, with the rich and upper middle class benefiting the least, because they already do quite well.

A sugar and grain based diet. A better question would be how can you be that poor and not be obese?

I will add, that every community may handle things differently. I could see the parents in my town starting a non-profit org to keep the current schools, which are excellent (Forbes recently rated them #2 in the country) open. Other communities you might have a lot of home schooling and a few private schools of all costs. The only reason you don't see low cost private schools now is because there is no demand for them. You pay a ton of taxes whether you send your kid to public school or not, so only the rich can also pay for private schools. Therefore the only private schools that can exist in this environment cater to the wealthy.

Every unionized "business" with a government backed monopoly operates this way. I spent a summer as a splice technician for NYNEX when I was in college. Anything goes and anything is acceptable...except doing your job well, doing your job quickly, or being honest about the number of hours you worked. You really want a "solution" to this? 1) Close every public school in the US. 2) Immediately reduce the property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, and any other taxes which went to paying for the public school system. 3) Do nothing else, and see what the market comes up with. 3.5) It would help tremendously to get rid of taxes that currently support the United States foreign empire/wars to help people pay for the education of their children on the free market.

What about turnarounds and distressed opportunities? Lot of upside there. Turnarounds rarely turn.

I was wondering should single value investors try to pick women the way they do stocks? Low cost, good cash flow, good capital allocation ... How many dates before you can ask to take a peak at the books?

Hey Gio, I don't want to give you any advice, because I haven't been on a first date since the first date with my wife when I was 17 years old, so what the hell do I know? But I want to wish you good luck!

B

+1 to Kraven and T-Bone1's last posts. If there is one lesson that I think I'm starting to learn is that there is no "next Buffet" and to stop searching for him. I've always done best by finding undervalued companies and investing in them myself. Sure I sometimes find them because someone else invested in them, but stealing someone's idea is different than blindly depending on some guru to invest your money for you. I've been paring down my FFH over the last year anyway for many of the same reasons T-Bone stated. "Prem is smarter than me, he must know what he's doing" doesn't cut if for me anymore. When you don't agree with how someone does business there is no need to do business with that individual. The amount of hubris required to think that you are going to turn Blackberry's handset business around at this point in the game is just absolutely staggering. Yes the BBRY investment it is only a small percentage of FFH, but like the SD and Fibrek situations it is a window into a personality type of someone that I'm not sure I wish to invest in/with. I used to hold a 50% FFH position, it is still 14% of my portfolio today and I'm re-evaluating that. If the info that the plan is to try to turn BBRY around is true than I think BBRY is the final straw for me.

The American system (crony-capitalism, corporatism, mercantilism, fascism, or whatever you want to call it) at its best. Why use your resources to compete in the marketplace with all its uncertainties and all those fickle customers, when controlling the use of government violence through the political process to maintain your market share is so much easier? Comcast funding political groups to defeat Seattle Mayor who is getting gigabit fiber for Seattle

I know we are trying to be stock pickers here but why not choose the best fund available? For my 401k, I avoid the S&P500 index fund and get the MSCI EAFE/MSCI World funds for more exposure to international markets. My holdings in my IRA/regular are primarily U.S. companies. I also get my fixed income allocation from an actively managed mutual fundd. I have access to some great low cost Vanguard index funds and some good value managers with low expense ratio funds. I know "market return" is not as sexy as what we aim for here but I think having funds in my 401k makes sense for my asset allocation. Many good points. I did the allocation on my first day when I set it up, thinking that I'd do more research and figure out what to do later. I just never did. Reading mutual fund prospectuses where each fund owns a ton of different stocks in a ton of different industries all subject to change at any time at the whim of the management is about as exiting as watching your grass grow. Do you then try to keep tabs on what they are doing year by year and reallocate? Oh gee this fund now has 1.43% in XOM, it was 1.18% last year.... Still, I am way overweight North America, you have a good point. Putting a higher percentage in foreign funds might make some sense.

I ran into the same thing 2 years ago when I changed employers. My old employer used Fidelity for their 401K which had a "Brokerage Link" option, my new employer uses Transamerica which doesn't. I am doing almost what you suggested. One I rolled over my old 401K into an rollover Traditional IRA (I manage this, but no longer contribute to it), I max out my Roth IRA every year, and contribute 8% to my new 401K invested in whatever mutual funds they have available. They have a bunch of funds, I just allocated 5% each into 20 of them. Yes, it pisses me off as well that someone else other than me decides where and how I can invest my money.

Eric, I just ran across this company's website. EOS Energy. They don't mention residential on that page, but their smallest "commercial and industrial" units sound perfect for what you are looking for. They say Here's a presentation where they talk about grid storage, electric vehicle applications, as well as residential applications like what you are looking for. http://www.eosenergystorage.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Eos-Public-Presentation-2013-02-11.pdf The only problem is that it looks like none of these systems are shipping just yet. 2014 for the grid-scale systems and 2015 for the smaller systems.

I haven't had a cell phone plan in about 10 years. I had a Sprint 200 min for $19/month plan way back when. This is my current phone: LG 840G Prepaid Tracfone. My wife and kids have tracfones as well. They are fine for talking and texting. We have iPads/Kindle Fires/iPods/computers/etc for internet when at home.

They don't have an internet and phone only package? My cable company has the triple package as well as packages for any one or two. I'd save about $100 a month if I got rid of TV from my package. The wife and kids are the only reason I don't.

When you've got a government (i.e. violence) protected monopoly in most of the areas where you operate you can do what you wish. Monopolies = bad and expensive service. This is true whether you are talking about public education, police protection, or internet access.

These look interesting. You can put it on top of your existing desk and switch between standing and sitting as often as you wish. I'm thinking of getting one of these for my office at work. The Kangaroo Pro Junior model is $399. http://www.ergodesktop.com/products