Xerxes

if there is some sort of peace, Putin entire focus will shift back to Russia to shore up his regime and find those “traitors” who had mislead him. Killing Ukrainian would mean unleashing an insurgency in himself a day later the conventional fighting ended, and turning this into his Afghanistan. I happen to believe that while they had plans to decapitate the Ukrainian regime (Zelensky) at the onset of the conflict, as the conflict unfolded they probably came to the conclusion that he is needed to be the person alive as the president making peace given his popularity. Same way Tokyo was not nuked in 1945 but two other cities were. this is Iran-Iraq war all over again with two exhausted boxers, fighting to stalemate, but one side may decide to use a pistol if push comes to shove.

Putin is a rational actor. He will not push the red apocalyptic button as that would be MAD but will use tactical nuclear, if the foundation of Russia (=> his regime really <=) is threatened. This prolonging war & sanctions threaten the very core of his regime, so that is a real possibility, and I am not in the ‘that would never happen’ camp when it comes tactical nukes.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-22/niall-ferguson-putin-and-biden-misunderstand-history-in-ukraine-war great read by Niall Ferguson. Glad to see he is not delusional and not in the “lets fight the Russian to the last Ukrainian crowd”

^^^ If the shorts had done well or really well (for whatever reasons), would we have considered them still as a “stupid move” “gone over their heads” etc. does the outcome has a say if the move was stupid or is the binary nature of thinking that is considered stupid, regardless of the outcome

I think this podcast is really worth listening too. Specially the part how it is the growth in the lower/middle class that really propel the commodity cycle in contrast to monetary inflation etc.

I don’t know what you define as blitzkreig. But a Heinz Guderian-style blitzkreig would be (in my mind) Russian armour closely supported by air dashing ahead past Kiev and cities looking to outflank, encircle enemy military formation. Thereby bypassing the cities. once enemy military formations are obliterated then you would get the towns and cities through negotiations and political settlement. as oppose to first going for the cities. Pre-Bonaparte, Europe was also big on “capturing cities” but Napoleon (to some degree influenced by Prussia) demonstrated that it is far important to destroy enemy military formations and get the cities through settlement. I am not sure I have any clue on what Plan A was suppose to be with Putin. Perhaps he truly believe the people would raise up to overthrow their own government. If that delusion was Plan A, so plan B would be what we know: moving the siege guns and battery rams into position. either way no blitzkrieg IMO. Also there is the element that in Putin’z mind, he was actually waging a limited war to “encourage peasants to march on Kiev and overthrow their own government”. that limited war has morphed into something he can no longer control. War cannot be limited. You go all in with clear objectives.

So he is really swapping short-term duration money with [med/long-term duration money + management]. question ? i realize BRK is net buyer of its stock and he is no mood to issue stock to fund any purchase these days, …. but if he were to issue stock (b/c the seller hypothetically wanted a piece or be tax-efficient) and then buyback the said amount with BRK cash, are there major friction for BRK that would work against doing that ?

It is an old episode but was informative when I listened to it last year

If he was playing Age of Empires, he could have "loaded" from his last "save" from Feb 21, and do things differently, or used the following cheatcodes .... or maybe even go for "wimpywimpywimpy" What is the cheat code to get 10,000 Su-27MK ? 10,000 wood - lumberjack. 10,000 food - cheese steak jimmy's. 10,000 gold - robin hood. 10,000 stone - rock on. 100,000 of all resources - ninjalui. Commit suicide - wimpywimpywimpy. Control animals instead of men - natural wonders. Full map - marco.

@Spekulatius& others I think a good candidate is Statoil (which i recently discoverd it re-branded itself as "Equinor"). I knew of it by its old name, and accidently ran into again when browsing SempusAugustus newest letter. Equinor is a current Bloomstran holding, I have not been following this thread, so apologies if it has been mentioned before on earlier page. Here is a great read on it fro Barron'. I personally have found Shell way too complicated. In this day and age, market likes straight forward businesses when it comes O&G industry. Buy Equinor Stock. It’s the Stock to Play the Surge in European Natural-Gas Prices. | Barron's (barrons.com) "No Western energy company has greater exposure to European gas, which may be the single best energy market in the world now. Formerly known as Statoil, Equinor provides about 20% of the Continent’s gas. Equinor may also be the greenest of the top global energy companies, with a carbon footprint per barrel of oil and gas produced that is less than half the industry average. It stacks up well against its peers in offshore wind power generation and carbon capture, with unmatched technological expertise." "Equinor produces more than two million barrels a day of oil and its equivalent, split evenly between oil and gas. Two-thirds comes from the company’s prolific Norwegian offshore fields. European gas is about a third of its total output, and most of it is sold on the spot market and thus benefits from current high prices. “This winter, the energy realities in Europe have demonstrated the importance of stable and reliable deliveries of gas from Norway,” said Anders Opedal, Equinor’s CEO, on the company’s earnings call in February. “Currently, we see low inventories, low spare capacity, and too-low energy investments over time.” Of course we are heading into the summer month where demand wil wane ... "The biggest risk with Equinor would be a collapse in European gas prices. Its stock, however, already discounts some potential decline, given a free-cash-flow yield of about 20%, assuming oil at $100 a barrel and gas at $20—half the current price. Assume gas at $10 per thousand cubic feet and the free-cash-flow yield is about 10%."

The invention of supertanker 50-60 years ago turned a fragmented oil market into global market with a global price, albeit heavily influenced by OPEC at the beginning simply because of their outsize control on supply. everytime we had high prices that led to new source of supplied, lowering OPEC contribution and influence. Like the North Sea fields in the 80s. Etc. natural gas remained very much a local fragmented market (with local price) because it was constrained by the pipeline. As the number of LNG increases that will do to natural gas what supertanker did to the oil market: a convergence toward a global price (net of shipment cost etc)

not to mention high oil prices of late 70s and early 80s that kept the lifeline to USSR. it could have ended sooner than it did.

This a good article that summarizes Sir John Rose’ legacy at RR. A former banker at the helm of an aerospace firm = you get an aftermarket business turned into annuities to pad and smooth out the earning. https://amp.ft.com/content/6b861958-a56a-11e5-97e1-a754d5d9538c

I think where RR really faltered was their accounting practice where they book earnings on those long term rosy forecast today and reevaluate those assumptions. they had a CEO in the mid-2000 who really pioneered this at RR which really planted seeds of its demise. No different than GE Power. I cannot talk in details of accounting practices of P&W and GE Aviation when it comes to aftermarket (I don’t know them). My guess would be that they stayed away from aggressive accounting. same for Boeing and Airbus. Boeing had a really funny way to account for its development cost (against projected production volume into the future), while Airbus was the more conservative.

Thats a great chart. Watsa the outlier. One big call option that other have less of. - Everybody else is right now until they aren’t. - Watsa the outlier is wrong now until he is right.

Actually. Larry Culp new 2024 product: GE Aviation pure-play stock, will make GE more attractive than SAFRAN from 737/320 exposure point of view (valuation asides)

The other thing, even though SAFRAN is more than just an engine manufacturer, i think with SAFRAN one could have gotten a far more focused play on the massive 737MAX + A320NEO backlog than the General Electric where that CFM/LEAP focus was diluted in a sea of unwanted assets.

Couche-Tard RTX Mercadoliber

I was just suggesting that Ukraine would have been (the eastern portion) as a series protectorates, buffer states, DMZ but no direct annexation (except in Crimea) as a province. So a broken country in a state of perpetual chaos and in-fighting where the Ukrainian identity slowly would have eroded with time. I dont think you need as much Russian troops to occupy a broken state that has splintered into fiefdoms (all vying for Moscow’ blessing) than you would if you were occupying a single identity-nation. but yeah not a democracy, just a series of buffer states

Putin didn’t even want to annex those newly declared people’ republic of Donbas from few weeks ago. For those of you who have been following the events in Georgia in 2008, you would know that after 14 years, those people’s republic of Abkhazia and the other one seized from Georgia were still not annexed to this day. the reason is probably more economics, Kremlin wants defacto control and not dejure control. I.e in full control but not in name. only Crimea was the exception to the norm given its strategic location and history. And Russia was already in Sevastopol. I know the “Putin wants to restore USSR” gets thrown out a lot. I would say that he wants the same thing every Russian ruler (Tsar or Communist) wanted: a series of buffer states separating it and the West. This is not new just happens to be front and centre on Western media these days.

“If it is victory, than it will tastes bitter as defeat” who said that in what movie ?I don’t remember anymore. A Pyrrhic victory it will be for Moscow. The de-militarization objective itself will end up de-fanging it own military instead. The Ukrainian can remove the statement from the constitution (I think I heard somewhere that is on their constitution) about NATO aspiration (it will be an inside joke that it is the cost of Putin’ off-ramp. now looking past this event, the crystal ball turns blurry. The Economist calls it full StaliniZation, what comes out of that is anyone’ guess.

OMG amazing. You can also see that scene with the old battery in the movie “king’ choice” on Prime. edit: it was not a battle cruiser though as per this article. Blucher was a heavy cruiser. Royal Navy was the only navy that operated battle-cruisers at that time

and more appropriately and more related is the infamous “Mig corridor” during the Korean War. Soviet pilots actually flying Migs with Korean insignia.

I have always found PBS Frontline to have amazing investigative journalism. All the interviews are in YouTube full but the full episode is the thing to watch. I don’t think we have access in Canada (yet) for those in U.S. here is the link. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-road-to-war/

When I heard that it reminded of me Norway old gun batteries in Oslo sinking the German heavy cruiser Blucher on the eve of the invasion, which was carrying the diplomatic and personal staff of the invading force.