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They won't because as amazing as it might sound it is against the law in the US to say that your milk doesn't contain hormone.

For real? This is absolutely false in my household. As a monthly expenditure, food is beat only by mortgage, and not because of eating out. Not quibbling, just surprised. You're surprised for a reason. That's because it's true. Food is not cheap. It's hard to quantify my expenditure. But in my parents' case (and they're pretty thrifty ppl) they spend about $1,000 a month on food. That's 20% of their expenditure. In contrast to that, my mom's used Lexus is gonna end up coming in at $100 per month. It would be even lower if she'd hold it longer. My mom's cellphone bill comes in at $40 a month and my dad's at $25 (he doesn't use data). So yea food is a serious chunk. Now you could make some argument around how much of that money goes to the food producers vs. transportation and retail. But food cost is far from a negligible expense.

Okay, here is my story and my 2 cents. Though take this with a grain of salt since I'm not a typical bank customer. I do lots of wire transfers, I have accounts in 5 currencies etc. In my life I've done business with all 5 of the majour Canadian banks. I would say that I am extremely loyal on the deposit/services side. Not so much on the lending size. So here's my story. For most of my banking life (more than 20 years) my chequing account has been with Bank A. For a very brief period I've a chequing customer of a discount division of another majour bank - bank B. That relationship ended after I tried to send a wire and not only it was really difficult but they charged me 4 times as much as bank A. So goodbye bank B. To further exemplify how happy I am with bank A: While I was an employee of bank C (a huge majour) I had a gold plated account at bank C for free. I had to have it, they would only pay me into that account. Despite all that the main account I've used was the account at bank A where I still paid a fee. I have multiple credit cards, but the only one I really is the one from bank A that I've had for about a couple of decades. It's easy for me. I don't carry balances so I don't care about interest rates. I also don't like paying fees and I can't be bothered with travel hacking or anything like that. Oh and a few times when I forgot to pay my bill on time they've waived the fees and interest resulting from my failure to pay. I like that. My mortgage has started with bank B and now is quite small but transferred over to bank D. I would have preferred it to be with bank A, but banks B and D offered better rates so there I am. I also have a HELOC with bank B that I never use and just sits there as a backup. It stared with bank B, they've always matched rates so I saw no reason to pay a fee to move it. I also have a now small but initially huge student line of credit with bank E. I would have preferred bank A, but bank E offered a slightly smaller rate and a longer term. So off to bank E I went. I hope this paints a picture. Lending in my view is a commodity so the decision is driven by price. But the deposit and service side is where banks differentiate. I'm not so loyal to my bank because of the colour used in it's marketing. I'm loyal to them because they have really fantastic service and deliver again and again and again.

Yea. By the way just so I'm clear. What I'm saying is not that you can't lower HC costs by 5.5% of GDP. If think you can and probably even more than that. What I'm saying is that if you lower HC costs by 5.5% of GDP you won't also get a 5.5% GDP pop on top of it. The GDP pop would most likely be around 2%.

Well you wouldn't really free up 5.5% of GDP. Mostly you'll just reallocate it. I think maybe at most you create 2% of GDP (finger in the air measurement). But that's still nothing to sneeze at.

What you say is true. The US is a mess. You have all sorts of policies programs and ideas etc, etc. If single payer will go ahead I don't see it being a federal thing. Firstly, as I've said the whole system is already a huge, giant mess. Secondly, the US at this point is pretty much divided on everything. For something like this big to work the people working to make it happen have to want for it to work. If anything gets done federally what will happen is that someone will sabotage the whole thing from the beginning. One way that I can see this happening is that say a state like California that is more united around the issue decides to go single payer. I'm not choosing California just because of politics. It's economy is about the size of Britain. They have a pretty good health care system in Britain. Single payer, equal access, no deductibles, it's got good outcomes, high approval ratings, and it's pretty cheap. Whatever dissatisfaction with the NHS exists comes from the fact that the NHS rations out care to keep costs low which creates wait times. But you want to spend some more money, the system get better in a hurry. Now if you were to implement an NHS like system in Cali and increase its budget by 30% to make it fantastic, you still come out 30% below what you're currently spending. Non medicare/medicaid costs would come in 50% below what they are right now. Those are BIG numbers. If a big state like California successfully implements something like this other states will follow suit. Then the current system falls like dominoes.

With due respect. I think you're wrong. What you're essentially saying is that if healthcare companies aren't allowed to price gouge they'll pack their toys and go home? No they won't. Healthcare will still be a profitable business - not as profitable as before - but still quite profitable. Capitalism still works. And as long as there's money to be made people will line up to make it. The valuations of certain companies will be lower than before but R&D, inventions, and innovations will go on.

Spekulatius, I think Scotty is somewhat sober tonight. Initial post: Revised post without edit marker: Sober enough to realize that there was no gubernatorial election in California in 1992 and that California has had a Republican governor from 1983 to 1999 and then from 2003-2011. So maybe just 2 spliffs in? :-\

Single payer universal coverage is NOTHING alike court appointed legal counsel.

I also agree that eventually you will get single payer healthcare in the US. But I think it will be quite far in the future. So your investments are likely fine right now.

Almost all of those things you've listed are things that I would consider negatives in buying a car.

You make some valid points DTEJD. But respectfully I think you're still off. Technology moves along a line. First you figure out A, then you figure out B, then you figure out C, and so on. In our world we are at a point where we have discovered radar stealth technology (I know it's not perfect but good enough for us to spend a lot of money on it). But we're also at a point where we're hoping that we're gonna have a manned mission to our second closes planet some decades from now. If an alien race have developed interstellar transport technology. They've surely developed radar stealth. Since they're not popping out in times square we can assume they're pretty shy so reasonably they would employ their stealth tech to keep a low profile and not dance with F-18s. It could be an aircraft of an adversary of the US. But I doubt it. While there are brilliant people all around the world that can design some really cool stuff the whole process takes money. A lot of money. So much money that we'd know that something was up. But I also don't think that if another country had this sort of tech they'd necessarily go for subjugation. The US had the tech to make the SR-71 and didn't go for subjugation that much. Just a little subjugation here and there. Now the SR-71. This beast went into service in the mid 60s and let's face it, back then it was totally UFO stuff. It had some stealth, and speed and acceleration like you wouldn't believe. But just because the US had the tech to design and produce the SR-71 it doesn't mean that they've implemented that across the military. In fact back then the navy was still goofing around with F9s. So if a carrier launched some F9s to intercept an SR-71 to the pilots of the F9s the SR-71 would positively look like an alien craft. I would say that these UFOs are probably an output of the US military complex. If we were to encounter actual aliens I would posit that they would employ a level of technology that would be incomprehensible to us. Not simply amazing or baffling. Which would probably make it a good thing if we don't meet them at this stage.

I agree it would look pretty amazing. But I know a lot about cars and it's not quite so. What they probably did through the software update is increase breaking pressure - pretty much the only thing they can do. Basically cause the breaks to grip harder than they were designed to do. Over time this leads to increased wear(maybe not so much of an issue on Tesla), cracked pads, and warped rotors. Not exactly what I'd call a fix.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-30/theranos-fatal-flaws-were-in-plain-sight Just like Spekilatius said. Spotting and proving are two different things. Fraudsters by definition are good at bullshit ans weaving a good story. Then people want to believe. They want to believe the story. Anyone who points out that the emperor has no clothes is a nini who wants to ruin the story they want to believe in. Just look at the title of this thread. If you need evidence of that take a look at how people reacted on the Valeant thread when some members were pointing out that things don't quite add up. You can also look at the Tesla thread to see how some people reach when you point out inconvenient facts. In fact you don't have to go that far. You can look earlier in this thread at reactions to randomep's pointing out that Holmes' qualifications should have raised a red flag. So who needs that aggravation especially when there's nothing to gain. Much easier to realize something smells fishy and just move on.

And then he took 10% of his portfolio and put it into Valeant.

You don't get to have the Halo for 2 billion principal. Halo effects start from $3 billion and up. You take $7 billion and you get to have Buffett show up next to you an CNBC.

Well 1.2x is not where BRK should be. That's the point where it's such a bargain that Buffett will take out his shareholders. I don't think that the stock got "ahead of itself" in 2017. It probably got somewhere in the area of fairly valued. I don't see that as getting ahead of itself since the S&P and most of its components are beyond fair value. But it's a free country people can talk smack all they want.

As a general idea I like Scandinavian banks. Maybe I feel comfortable with them because Scandinavian banking is very similar to Canadian banking in my view. You have a nice oligopoly which allows a few players to earn nice returns. The banks are generally pretty good and well run but you have one of them that's like the retarded cousin. In Canada that's CIBC, i forget which one is the Scandinavian one. But generally the banks are conservative and well run. But, here's the problem. In these countries you have real estate prices and what are essentially bubble levels. On top of that the household sector is levered up like crazy. So you have all the right ingredients for a credit crisis. I don't think John's point that no Danish mortgage bond ever defaulted is relevant either. That's because the mortgage is the last thing you default on. So even if you don't see a big spike in mortgage defaults, the banks can rack up enough defaults in their other business lines to make owning them a very bad experience. This would also not be unprecedented. In the early 90 Scandinavian countries had themselves a nice big financial crisis. Though Denmark was less affected than the others. So life for John wouldn't have been as bad as for a guy named Sven. Basically all the banks went to zero. In this environment at the very least the future growth rate will be lower than in the past. Simply because households can't keep levering up at the rate they've done in the past. But an investment in the Scandinavian banks is essentially a bet on Scandinavian real estate. If the real estate market hold up you'll do well owning the banks. If it doesn't you'll have a very bad experience. That's not a bet I'm looking to make. However if real estate prices and household debt were 30%-40% below current levels I'd gladly buy Scandinavian banks.

Yea you and I called this one writser. There was no way the government would approve this one. National security is usually a BS groud thrown in there to cover anything. But if ever there was an acquisition to be truly denied on national security grounds this was it.

It sounds scary. But in reality it's not so scary. The payload of Stuxnet was basically just meant to mess around with centrifuges connected to Siemens PLCs. That's basically useless to anyone that doesn't want to mess around with an active nuclear weapons program. The real valuable part of it were the zero days and the digital signatures. If this thing was discovered by someone it would be either a private actor or a state actor. I think in the case of Stuxnet the Iranians didn't figure it out it was private entities. In this case I think there were two security companies. I think Symantec and Kaspersky in this case but I'm not sure. When this happens the zero days get shared and they seize to exist cause they get patched. It's unlikely that a Joe Hacker could use this. Joe Hacker is unlikely to get this before a security company does. Even if he does by chance it's unlikely to unpack and reverse engineer it before the security companies do because it's so complex. If a state gets a hold of it again the most valuable parts are the zero days and the digital signatures. But any state with a cyber weapons program would have a stack of zero days. Maybe some of the same ones that Stuxnet used. Also any state security service worth its salt would be able to to steal digital signatures. I agree that all this state spy stuff does sound a bit scary but it's also been true for a long time and we're still around.

Yep. Stuxnet was a complex piece of computer code. But it shouldn't be that surprising. Basically if a state with virtually unlimited budged and resources whats to screw with you, they can do it in any way and in any area of your life. The not so scary part is this. Just like any other weapon system something like stuxnet is very expensive to create. It's unlikely that some gang would create it. Then because it was so expensive to build it would be used for some diplomatic or political reason that does not affect the day to day life of most people. Nobody would create a stuxnet just to steal your credit card number.

Hey Eric, I'm sorry that you find yourself in this unfortunate situation and hope it gets resolved quickly and favorably. I haven't been on the board that long but if you need a letter saying that as far as I've seen you've spent your time talking about taxes, the cost of living in Santa Barbara and other nonsense like that without comping up with any ideas I'd be glad to do it. Furthermore the Ask Eric! thread contains plenty of statements from you about how you have no clue about investing. But like others have said, the opinion of internet dudes probably won't hold much weight in a court. While it's hard to prove a negative, I would focus more on proving that you are not a professional investor with facts. If I was making an argument I'd say that you can be a professional in two ways: as a fundamental investor or as a trader. Look at what those things entail. As a fundamental investor you would spend copious amounts of time reading annual reports, going on earnings calls, reading research, building valuation models. I don't think anyone can claim that you are a professional fundamental investor if you don't go on conference calls. Let's look at a trader. Which you could fall into because you make heavy use of options. How does that look like? Well they have subscriptions to data services, information services, they come up with strategies, they build trading models, they back test models. I'm guessing you haven't done a lot of that. You can get historical call records and do forensic analysis of your hard drives to get evidence you haven't been doing this stuff. It may cost a bit but given the stakes it's worth it. I should say I'm not a lawyer and you should definitely run everything through one. But as a professional investor I'd look at the above to determine whether one spends substantial time focused on investing or not.

Guys, chill out. Yea, the idea is stupid and it ain't gonna happen. But is the proposal outrageous? No. The thing was proposed by the Canada-United States Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders. Which sounds exactly like a women's lobby. The oil lobby makes proposals for lower taxes for oil. The agriculture lobby makes proposals for lower taxes for agriculture. Why should it be so surprising that a women's lobby makes proposals for lower taxes for women? What is obvious is that the org has weak sauce and they need to seriously upgrade their bullshit jujitsu if they actually want to get anything done.

I didn't mean that growth stocks are never undervalued. What I was saying was that they won't be undervalued to the level of undervaluation you would encounter in an angel situation. You won't buy an undervalued stock that will end up going up 100x or 1000x.

Do not worry the programmers figured this one out. Code will be embedded. Their AI will determine which vehicles are likely to be driven by teens and they will behave aggressively like the bad guys in Transformers to ward them off. In addition, their LIDARS will constantly be scanning for pickups with hanging testicles. If rednecks are detected the convoy will shift to a self defense mode. It will change colour and will blurt out liberal things to repel them. It's all second order thinking, you just don't get it. /sarc