twacowfca

St. Joe isn't a substantial cash generator as the BRK textile business was when its working capital was freed up as the business declined. The BRK textile business was a poor business, but BRK provided the money to buy National Indemnity which provided even more funds as float for investment. The rest is history. :)

Been there, done that. :(

In The Denationalization of Money, (1976) Hayek advocated free floating fiat or asset based currencies or other monetary systems, competing for soundness and other desirable characteristics, rather than a return to the gold standard. :)

Please note that this press release signed by Marc Hamburg is the first to directly reference WEB's retirement and specific succession of function to designated individuals. Stay tuned for more to come in the near future. :)

Only 3 times as much?

Why Harry, you've become a 'droid! (With apologies to the screenwriters for Hook) :)

This has curb appeal for bank bears, but the economic impact may be little more than a rounding error for F&F if the amounts they got from settlements of similar lawsuits a few months ago is any guide. What is interesting though from a political angle is that the banks are being sued not by F&F but by F&F's regulator. During the financial crisis, the Obama administration, and Paulson during the Bush administration, used F&F as a CPR machine to help keep the big banks alive. I think this development is most interesting, especially because the Democrat party historically has greatly favored F&F. F&F used to be ATM machines for Democrat Party fund raising until F&F sparked the financial crisis by buying and guaranteeing enormous quantities of bad paper, leading nearly to systemic collapse after the Bush administration facilitated the erection of a house of cards by repealing Glass-Stegal.

This came to my mind too. GSE Preferred is available at cents on the dollar so it fits with the 'modest amount of capital commitment' part. Right now, the GSE's control 90% of the US mortgage market. If they were to go away (and presumably the value of the preferreds go to zero), the big banks would gladly take their place and benefit from a windfall of new business. The latest SEC filings show 12% of Ackmans fund is in Citigroup. Maybe this is what he means by 'significant hedging benefits'. Just a guess. Having made good money three times since the beginning of the financial crisis on the F&F prefs, am by no means a bear, but realization of their relative exceptional value compared to the common is entirely a prediction exercise with politics at the forefront. Don't expect clarity until the 2012 national election results are in.

Yes, there will be value for the bonds, but not until the greatest mathematical mystery of all time is solved. . . . . . . How to multiply by zero. ;)

Probably enjoying his loot with no risk of prosecution. :(

You must have been in some pretty beaten up stuff. Care to share the names after the fact? BAC was one name I sold it and I have recently purchased leaps another I was able to buy was was my old nemisis JDSU I bought that at 2 and change it was selling below cash at that point, I could not even get myself to buy the net nets and they were numerous when the mkt was at its darkest. Yeah. BAC was one of the beaten down companies we bought at the bottom. Within a few months, we rotated out of them back into our favorites like LRE and FFH. We kicked the tires on JDSU, but didn't buy. The crisis was so gripping, we somehow missed a couple we had been following that had become microcaps, Crocs and Select Comfort, that bounced and became thirty baggers. Sounds like a fish story, doesn't it? The big ones that got away.

There are so many greedy people, organizations, officials and persons of influence involved in all of these offshore listings that's almost impossible for any of these companies to escape fraudulent transfers of wealth. It's starting to become a scandal in China too. These companies can't even qualify for listing on the major Chinese exchanges. The startup funds for these budding frauds are typically raised from unsophisticated Chinese of modest means through sale of unregistered shares. When these small investors are taken to the cleaners, they are told to contact the US shell corporation to try to get some of their money back. Meanwhile, US investors are trying to recover funds from China. Thus, the head of the snake starts eating its own tail while the creature is being devoured from within.

The "investors willing to buy into the not a complete fraud argument" suggest those men seeking a mail order/Internet bride who buy into the " almost a virgin" argument. :P

"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do." -- Ben Franklin

That would be a sucker bet. P&C company stock prices generally go up after a bad hurricane. I'll be surprised if this storm turns out to be as bad as the commentators make it out to be, unless it hits NYC at the most vulnerable spot, directly to the west of Gotham, because the storm isn't as energetic as the most damaging storms have been.

Here's my two cents. I think bank stocks are down because their margins are starting to contract. BAC, as one of the more troubled large banks, has suffered the most.

I loved it! Interesting how this old timer rotates in and out of his favorite stocks every so often as they go up or down. Yes, he buys low and sells high.

Yes. Market cap weighted index funds!

History suggests poor overall market returns going forward like the returns for the last decade. However, that's a great time to carefully trade in and out of carefully selected value stocks because the volatility will periodically throw up bargains. This is much better for good value investors than a bull market that rises into a bubble because the only choices then are to drink Mr. Markets Kool Aid or sit on the sidelines. :)

Yes, but the PE10 in 2000 was something like 43, almost double the PE 10 in 1929.

Or rather pretending.

None of the above.

. Many industries, including oil are cyclical. When a cyclical downswing coincides with a secular downswing: Watch Out! The recent oil boom has largely been driven by China. If their economy rolls over, it's triple trouble.

Balance sheet depressions/recessions like the recent one in Japan or the US and most other developed countries in the 1930's are associated with PE contractions, but highly inflationary periods are also associated with PE contractions that are as bad or worse.

Yes, But oil is a cyclical business. That industry is coming off a huge ten year period of awesome profits.