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This has been going on for a long time. I was getting lots of hits on searches to CoBF before I became a member. The posts were of such quality that I decided to fork over $20 to Parsad to become a member and stop mooching.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be insulting. But if you think those prices are inexpensive you're delusional. I can walk into my liqueur store and buy high quality German beer for $2.10 (tall boys 500 ml). For $30 ($6 a glass) I can buy a good Burgundy. For $18-$24 I can buy a very good bottle of Cotes du Rhone. The quality of these wines are very likely much, much higher than what you get in your grocery store glass. These are regular price btw, no sales. I live in Canada where alcohol is expensive due to taxes. I'm sure the prices are lower in the US for these items. I should mention that I am someone who has plenty of money. I consider the prices you've listed as very high and would not pay. The idea that an average person would consider that very inexpensive is incorrect to say the least.

Some thoughts on this. Trader Joe's is owned by a branch of the family that owns Aldi. I think Trader Joe's is owned by Aldi Nord while the Aldi Stores in the US are owned by Aldi Sud or something like that. Lidl in Europe is pretty much like Aldi. Not really upscale at all. Maybe they're following a different strategy in the US or maybe they seem more upscale because the stores are new. These German guys do not mess around. When they came to Britain the destroyed the grocery business and there were some really fierce players over there. I think Kroger's strategy is wrong. The global trend is towards smaller, more focused stores and they're building behemoths.

15% in CAD and and 23% in constant currency. CAD really screwed me over this year! Haven't really done much in 2017. Pretty much the same portfolio from 2016 with plenty of cash. I'm glad to see that many board members have had very good results. Congratulations!

I'm pretty sure you can overdose if you use enough but people don't cause they know their dosage and tend to OD when they move away from their dosage by adding alcohol or some other drug. It seems we have MDs on this thread so maybe they can answer this better than me. But further to your point, let's say you have Leanne the suburban housewife who's zonked on xanax with a side of chardonnay. Nobody has a problem with that cause they probably don't know and this way she's pleasant and bakes cookies so they don't ask many questions. Now say that the Xanax producer replaces the alprazolam with some fentanyl. Now she's taking fentanyl with a side of chardonnay and no opioid tolerance. She overdoses. This is not a totally unrealistic scenario as they did find plenty of Xanax and other drugs that were really fentanyl. Check the picture below that is relevant to my previous post as well. It sure looks like something significant happened to fentanyl around 2013.

I find the article pretty pretty upsetting.... because I enjoy reading Michael Lewis. It's not a very good one. It reads like a snarky post on CoBF not so much as an article in a magazine. Firstly, there are the flat wrong facts such as that Buffett recently became an arbitrageur. Buffett has always been an arbitrageur doing lots of "workouts". This was not something that was hard to find/confirm. Then he talks about the sweet deal he got on the Salomon deal where his $700 million worth of convertible prefs were worth between $850 million and $1.2 billion at time of issue. Firstly, that's some mighty accurate valuation work for a "big swinging dick" bond salesman ::). Secondly, he says that the difference was somehow unfairly charged to the Salomon shareholders. Really? He writes this article after the shit hit the fan at Solly. How much would those Solly shares be worth for the shareholders without Buffett there? I think that the shareholders actually got a rather good deal. He proceeds to use his supreme authority to proclaim the EMT true: I think that Berkshire shareholders would respectfully disagree. Anyway I don't think I need to continue to dispute this premise on CoBF. I do believe that Buffett is a man of high integrity and he has a folksy persona (maybe real maybe not). He's also a shrewd and ruthless businessman. So what? But I think that this is what really bothers Lewis. He has a picture in his mind of successful people. And they look and behave like the people on the Salomon trading floor. So Buffett because he's successful must be like them and everything else is just a fake persona. But this is just a prejudice. The idea that successful people look like Solly traders and if you're folksy and have integrity you have to be the patsy is just a caricature. I think that Buffett's greatest contribution to society is that he proved that you can have integrity and at the same time be wildly successful. But this seems to really, really bother some people. Anyway, the article was written in early '92. Lewis was barely out of Solly. Maybe Buffett even fired some of his friends. Let's just say that maybe the subject was a little too close to home. Then we can go enjoy his next book cause the man can really tell a story. Edit: Do you think that someone actively updates these articles? The picture at the top seems way more recent than 1992. Maybe circa 2014?

I certainly don't have the answer to the question but let me see if I can frame the issue here a bit. Let's take x as some date when the opioid epidemic began. There were surgeries performed before x. There were opioids before x - some of the most popular (codeine, morfine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, fentanyl) have been around for a really, really long time. So what happened between x and now? Furthermore, is this drug crisis or is it an overdose crisis. There's always been a segment of people that use/abuse drugs. Could it be that opioids are the popular drug of the day and they're just easier to overdose than the drugs of yesterday? Or maybe they don't even know what they're taking. They think they're taking something but instead they're taking lots of opioids because their illicit supplier changed the formulation to include fentanyl resulting in an opioid overdose. My guess is that the second part has a lot to do with what we're seeing. The reason for this is that there has been a huge spike in ODs quite recently (2013) and quite suddenly especially related to fentanyl. This tends to point to a distinct and significant event at that specific time and I don't think it was cause by legitimate people/business behaving badly.

+1

With the risk of being ridiculed here in a decade I will go out and predict with high confidence that Berkshire will be a great company in 10 years time and also much larger than it is today. are you indifferent to whether buffett/munger have left the land of the willing? you say they will be much bigger. who will make these acquisition decisions? recency bias can be important when the top two guys have a combined 175 years Yes my statement is indifferent to whether the two good shepherds will be with us or not. The subs will make a lot of acquisitions. They will also deploy growth capital. Also there's gonna be the occasional deal of a larger size done by T&T.

With the risk of being ridiculed here in a decade I will go out and predict with high confidence that Berkshire will be a great company in 10 years time and also much larger than it is today.

That's how long it took the market to recover. That's not healthy. Dude, put down the bottle! That has nothing to do with recessions or the economy. By that logic the economy was total shit between 1969 and 1992. The economy also really sucked between 2000 and 2007 and didn't really find it's legs again till 2014. I guess if you speak to a tulip trader the economy has been in a recession since 1637.

Well I think that puts are looking attractive on most things. I am in particular looking at getting puts on large positions that that have had a large run up but I also like but don't want to sell or can't. Things like BRK, WFC, MGA, etc. Since insurance is really cheap at this time I think it makes sense to pick up some in order to protect gains that have been made. Clearly a defensive posture on my part but hey, a dollar not lost is kinda like a dollar made right?

It's not a stock, but put options look mighty attractive at this point.

Guys I'm really not trying to be a dick but please can we at least keep this thread bitcoin free.

There isn't any other business that where you can have too big to fail like the banking business. I can't think of anything else where if one large enough player fails the whole industry fails or if one industry fails the whole economy fails. In the case that you have mentioned with large overlevered hospitals Chapter 11 is always there for them and no disruption really occurs. In my opinion, where you've got too big to fail building up is companies with lots of employees. That's not too big to fail in the economic sense (like banks) but in a political sense. Basically politicians won't let these companies fail because the solution to the problem will mean large layoffs and that's not palatable. GM was too big to fail in this sense.

"I just wanted to be independent and I overshot a little" CM

Watch the movie too. Really good.

I think a lot of these discussions about the tax bill impact on BV are flawed. One reason why BRKs P/B is >1 is that the deferred tax liabilities (DTLs) are recorded at face value but there's basically no chance that they would be incurred tomorrow, or if ever. For this reason PV of DTLs<FV of DTLs. The tax bill will reduce the FV of DTLs and increase BV by the same amount. But the same logic will imply that there should be some compression in P/B. You shouldn't get the same bump in MV as you do in BV because PV<FV.

Some thoughts: 1. There weren't great statistics being kept half a millennia ago. So I wouldn't put much stock in the inflation rate of 1682. 2. Not really the greatest phase of innovation in over a century. Introduction of AC motors, etc was way more significant. Though we can argue about the timing. Anyway if there's so much innovation why are productivity gains so small? If innovation is what's keeping inflation low that's because it's causing a large expansion of aggregate supply. If that's true we should see big productivity gains. 3. This actually makes no sense. Why should Fed policy be wrong? Just because he likes high rates? If the rates are artificially low why isn't there a shortage of credit?

Right, because that's what you want to do with alleged pedophiles. Give them the benefit of the doubt and send them to the US Senate. Here's a simple question. If you had a 14 year old daughter would you leave her alone with Roy Moore?

Yes, it's the liberals have a lot of soul searching to do. Not the fine people of Alabama who voted for a pedophile. You know, the Christians with the family values and all. SMH.

So pay out a $20 billion dividend (virtually all free cash) -- no more tuck ins at subs. Yea, that sounds like a brilliant idea.

Yes they can convert A to B, effectively engineering their split. Also if the tax bill passes the estate tax will be repealed. This will eliminate a large pressure to sell shares. In regards to income it's likely that BRK will introduce a dividend when the cash flows grow large enough. But even without a dividend the holders of shares can borrow against the shares. As long as the margin rates are below BRK returns that would be a smart play.

My truck stands ready as well.

Cubsfan, I think you're pretty spot on with your posts. Not only will Howard be left behind as the enforcer but a lot of shares will be in the hands of various foundations. Yes, they have to sell shares and spend the money. But that will take a long time. So they'll be significant shareholders for the foreseeable future. How much do you want to bet that they've received specific instructions on how to vote in the case of a breakup? On top of all that Berkshire will be a horrible mess to untangle (by design?) with the insurance cos owning operating subs, etc, etc. Furthermore trying to break up Berkshire can be a career ending event. Berkshire has shitloads of shareholders that don't sell their shares and are patient in collecting their returns/value. These types don't jump up cause the stock might get a pop from a corporate event and may very well be angered by the thought. They may very well lash out at who gets the brilliant idea. Being CEO of Berkshire will be a pretty sweet gig for anyone. Why would one risk that just to try a breakup? I'm pretty sure the CEO's contract will not have a clause where he gets to walk away with $100 million in the event of a breakup as is the case with other companies. Finally, a breakup would be a value destructive event and thus pretty stupid. Berkshire benefits a lot from the fact that subs can cross-pollinate each other with capital which results in efficient allocation of capital. A lot of capital deployment actually happens at the sub level. Let's take MidAmerican for example. It never paid a dividend to HQ. Is that because Berkshire doesn't like divvies (other subs have strict dividend requirements)? Or is it because MidAmerican had and attractive set of investment opportunities that HQ didn't and thus that money was more valuable in their hands than HQ? Do you then think that MidAmerican would be more valuable as a stand alone entity where it would pay out 60-80% of its earnings or in its current form inside of Berkshire?