Dalal.Holdings

He's got "masterstrokes" in the sense that he uses smoke and mirrors to deflect blame from himself. Case in point: saying that the chaos this weekend was due to "Delta airlines glitch" and not incompetence from his White House. The thing is that the only people he fools are his diehard supporters (i.e. The Dilbert cartoonist who thinks he has it all figured out) who reinforce the notion in their heads that he is a genius. There's definitely some of investing lessons that can be drawn from this when it comes to shady (usually penny stock) management and bagholders' blindness. The lies grow and powerfully allow management to manipulate those shareholders. Anyone who doesn't buy the lie is a traitorous "short" of course.

It's easy to walk away from a mess created while running a limited liability company, but the country not so much.

He had tons of executive experience running "successful" businesses though. He talked about how he's "always winning" and surrounds himself with the "best people" like Steve Bannon on the national security council (in lieu of the joint chiefs and director of intelligence). Who would've expected such an epic fail so soon!?

False equivalency. Obamacare is several orders of magnitude more complex than a temporary travel ban. Green card holders are legal permanent residents who have the right to be protected by all laws of the United States. Their inclusion in the ban is a symptom of ideological extremism and incompetence. President-ing is hard. Why didn't anybody warn Trump. *Sniff*

Oops, looks like our POTUS doesn't always "know how to win": White House walks back on green card portion of executive order (which was pushed by Steve Bannon). https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/us/politics/white-house-official-in-reversal-says-green-card-holders-wont-be-barred.html This whole thing reeks of poor execution and underlying incompetence.

Disagree. The problem with America is not an inevitable decline, but a decline in certain domains (ie. manufacturing). We still dominate in many other areas (i.e. tech). Many people (particularly those in the middle of the country and the uneducated) were hurt by the shift away from manufacturing. The question is if those jobs can be brought back. We (like every other nation) will always have people who do not pursue higher education and there should be opportunities for them. The Germans seem to do a nice job with that. I personally would support moves by the current admin to bring those jobs back in some form (i.e. Tesla and SpaceX are great examples of American manuf brilliance and one reason why Trump seems to respect Elon Musk). The fear with the current administration is creating self-inflicted problems for the United States. An example is the immigration order which we know would have no real effect at stopping terrorism (and may make things worse), but is largely done for show to some of Trump's/Bannon's erratic base. What was the point of putting those 7 countries and excluding the Saudis? What was the point of excluding green card holders? Were they just the countries where Trump Hotels don't have branches? Such actions are just for show to the moronic base, but they harm America's standing and in the end will make us less safe, not more.

:D Remember, it was Obama who wanted to "take our rights away". LOL

A federal judge temporarily halted our moron-in-chief's executive order. Warning: POTUS butthurt meltdown imminent... Dude overplayed his hand. He had the ability to accomplish a lot of things early in his presidency as most Presidents do if they play their cards right. Most presidents start their terms by trying to unite the country behind them so they can accomplish key points in their agenda. He, however, has succeeded in bitterly uniting his opposition against him in just a week. He could've avoided this whole immigration issue by letting green card holders in while still halting refugees (this bit of nuance probably lost on him since he's not a details guy when it comes to policy, hence the title moron-in-chief). Guess this will be a wake up call to him that his powers can be checked. He could've instead tried to lower corporate taxes, bring back manuf jobs, etc etc but he goes down this stupid irrelevant path, now it won't be so easy...

Yes, the all powerful media is out to get you. Keep swallowing that White House propaganda + butthurt.

The headline should be: "Buffett attacks his self-created strawman." I've never met a serious person who is against legal immigration. Well, the new executive order on travel restrictions also includes green card holders for now. So those that have already gone through the legal immigration vetting process are now being held at gates and borders. Cheers! "...for now." A temporary measure until vetting system is put in place. Unfair you say? Remember, Obama did the same with Iraq refugees in 2011. Media outrage at the time = zero. http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/18/the-obama-administration-stopped-processing-iraq-refugee-requests-for-6-months-in-2011/ Obama didn't ban green card holders, so your point is irrelevant.

This hasn't been a "value investing" message board in a few years. It's basically a politics board with some investing thrown in. Where the problem arises is with all the namby-pamby, tootie fruity protests like the Women's March, where millions of people are now attempting to discredit our incoming President on the world stage before he has had the chance to Make America Great Again. We must remain diligent and not allow these radicals to take us off course when we are so close to seeing through our plans of the first American National Bankruptcy. No one understands the knife's edge that America is on like Donald Trump and it is time that those of you who haven't supported him buck up and put nation before ideology. The hypocritical butthurt is real. People will protest trump, he'll have to learn to grow a thicker skin. I remember when Trump tried to discredit his predecessor by doubting whether he was born in the U.S.... Karma is a b**** and at least Obama could handle criticism and not melt down every time he felt his poor ego was hurt. So much butthurt.

FDR, Churchill, Reagan, etc do not compare to Trump on the level of distortion of truth and downright lying. You can look at other leaders in Europe during the 1930s to get an adequate comparison to Trump... Some people here would really benefit from reading George Orwell: "alternative facts" might as well be from the Ministry of Truth. Don't make yourself so easily fooled by propaganda.

Well, would you like to live in a country where the media can freely manipulate the news for their own gain without sanctions? Because that is what they have now... I don't think one is better than the other for the people but the right winged goverment in control of the media would be better for us investors (at least short term). On the plus side: on this first day Trump was able to get more fat women out walking than Michelle Obama could in 8 years. ;D Are you joking!? Do you know what the first amendment is? The press does not have power to listen to your phone calls, launch missiles, drone strikes, and send special forces to your door. The president does. I'm not sure why so many people in here are so butthurt and scared of the media, it's the president who should be held to a higher standard. As for reporting of "facts", the last president literally had certain news orgs claiming he "wasn't born in the u.s.", birth certificate wasn't real (peddled by the CURRENT president), "wanted to take everyone's guns away", etc etc and we never saw this level of butthurt from him!! The fact that this president makes his very first press conference about this is very telling. And the reactions on this thread reveal which investors are loyal to the truth and which don't really care much for it. Sigh.

Since everyone likes to put these discussions in an investing framework: Imagine listening to a conference call where the CEO states that revenues increased by 25% YOY whereas a simple calculation shows there was actually a decline of 10%. The CEO not only stands by his numbers when challenged, but is pissed that analysts are questioning him. Then, in response further queries, the company's general counsel (or VP investor relations) states that the 25% increase is an "alternative fact". I just don't get how any rational person/investor could not be alarmed by this behaviour. Yes, there's always spin. But generally in the world's respected democracies the spin is not with regards to readily established facts. All this said, my biggest fear is that Trump's narcissism makes him very manipulable. He is clearly preoccupied with his own grandeur to a degree incomprehensible to the average person. Fortunately there are some smart people around him to help guide the ship. Bump.

Except for the fact that it was Trump and team being dishonest about crowd sizes, not the media.

I was thinking of that Kasich story exactly! His cabinet picks seem conventional (relative to himself), and so that is my hope.

Not voting Democrat because of wiki leaks is like if you had two companies to invest in, one of them (Company A) had full disclosure (all 10-K's, 10-Qs, proxies, etc etc) and the other (Company B) had no public filings. You see some things in A's filings that are a bit shady, so you then opt to put it all in Company B which you have no info on. That was the 2016 election. We had full info on one candidate (tax returns, a decade of e-mails, decades in the public spotlight) and almost no info on Candidate B. And many like you went with B because of bias against info released against A (without similar info about B to judge fairly). Wikileaks had info on Candidates A and B, and the intelligence agencies suggest that, with influence from Russia, only info on "A" was released to affect outcome of the election.

To add, this is the most fascinating thing I watched this weekend, and I think Ray Dalio is on point: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-01-18/the-crisis-of-the-middle-class-davos-panel The question is: will Trump be aggressive and thoughtful or aggressive and reckless? The signs from this weekend are not reassuring. The hope is that he focuses on superficial details such as his image and defers on the more critical functions of government to others.

You're comforted that Trump parallels nationalistic leaders in Europe during the 1930s?? His first press conference and address to the CIA were worrying in that he can't let petty things go. "Alternative facts"!? Are we going to start doubting the numbers on Jobs, GDP, etc etc? A large portion of the U.S.'s prosperity is due to its credibility--if that falls, then so will the country's AAA rating, status as reserve currency, etc, etc. The hope is that Trump only focuses on trivial things like crowd sizes and leaves the meat of governing to his more conventional cabinet picks.

So from your model of how credit should vary with interest rates, you'd argue that a planned, gradual expansion of interest rates should result in credit expansion as "buyers" of credit seek to lock in temporarily low rates? Trying to think more about this model... On a related note, I recently watched an interview with James Grant (of interest rate observer) where he essentially described fixing rate as no different than price controls.

No idea where you're assuming Buffett ever said anything about raising payroll taxes. What matters (and what Buffett focuses on) is the percentage of total taxes paid by an individual relative to total income (why the secretary example makes sense: total taxes/total income). Emphasis added to WB's words:

You're absolutely wrong--he's been talking about raising capital gains taxes all along: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=0 Straight from the horse's mouth:

I would be surprised if Buffett didn't cut a deal with the IRS at some point in his life. He's been in business over 60 years and we all know he is desperate to avoid taxation, did he not try to write off his bicycle as a business expense when he submitted his first tax return!? I would be shock it at some point in his career he didn't cross the line at some point. To cross swords with the IRS doesn't make him a crook, however at the same time you can't help but think his attitude to taxation is more of a "do as I say" rather than a "do as I do". This so called Buffett hypocrisy on taxes is laughable. Fact is that he made his early fortune when tax rates were much higher than now--he actually had a tougher playing field.