Munger_Disciple

I would like to pose the following question to the board members: Who do you think will succeed Buffett as Berkshire CEO & why you think so? Vanity Fair article mentions Sokol, Abel, Jain & Rose as potential successors, but you can name others. FWIW, I think it will be either Ajit Jain or Dave Sokol. If I had to pick today, my guess would be Ajit Jain because insurance is still the #1 business of Berkshire.

My mistake. I just started reading your notes where you mentioned you attended the Chicago event.

Thanks Alex. Did you attend the Chicago event or CA event or both?

Does anyone on the board have access to Pabrai 2010 AGM notes? Thanks in advance.

Happy Holidays to all board members! And special thanks to Parsad for hosting this wonderful site.

Future is obviously uncertain. But if I had to bet, I would also bet against deflation.

If you really think there is going to be deflation, you should buy long-dated treasury bonds.

Careful with your spelling...Lowes is the home improvement retailer. I assume you're referring to Loews, the hotel & insurance, etc company. Thanks for pointing out the spelling error. I meant Loews (hotels, gas, insurance), symbol L, and not the home improvement retailer.

While Lowes always trades at a discount to sum of parts, its operating businesses are far inferior to those owned by Berkshire. So, in some sense these are two different companies. Lowes is more a Ben Graham play whereas Berkshire is becoming more and more like a company Phil Fisher would invest. Full disclosure: Long Berkshire and Lowes.

I have a different take on ratings agencies. I think they make cyclical credit problems worse. When things are good, they issue AAA to just about every product concocted by Wall St (eg., subprime junk). This has the effect of prolonging and enlarging the credit bubble. When things inevitably turn around, they make matters worse by downgrading everyone including very credit worthy institutions (eg., Berkshire). This has the effect of worsening the credit deflation. I have no idea why large institutional investors pay attention to credit ratings from Moody's or S&P. They certainly have the means to do their own credit analysis. It comes back to the institutional imperative that Keynes and Buffett talked about.

It will be indeed interesting to see if Fairfax's future debt costs come down if they get upgraded by Moody's.

Parsad, It appears to me that the debt markets by and large do not care about Moody's ratings these days. For example, even though Berkshire's credit rating was downgraded, they have been able to issue debt at very low rates.

In my opinion, Moody's ratings are meaningless especially after how they rated all the subprime CDOs AAA.

Well deserved honor. Congratulations to Buffett.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/opinion/17buffett.html?_r=1

It seems to me that the equity risk for FFH remains the same as before whether they hold the total return swaps or direct equity holdings. It appears to me that they just levered up the major equity positions, and have reduced the cash they put up. But they will suffer the same downside as well as enjoy the same upside. So why are they doing this? If they are prudent, they will have to hold more than enough cash to cover the downside of their swap contract.

Thanks treasurehunt! I will try it out.

Any ideas?

I am trying to include stock option price in Google Docs. I know Google Docs supports stock prices, but I am not sure if it supports option symbols. TIA for your help.

My guess is Seth Klarman.

It does seem strange. It seems like being appointed to this position is the equivalent of winning the Nobel prize for investing. I am guessing that Li Lu did not want to manage such a massive portfolio.

WSJ reported that Li Lu turned down the offer from Berkshire. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303467004575574630162624198.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

rogermunibond, thanks for the excellent summary.

Does this mean that you can only buy books on Kindle's 3G network but you cannot really surf and check email? It does not seem to me that it is that great Kindle option. I have the same dilemma as some of the other users: I want to carry just one device to read pdfs and ebooks. From wjhat I heard form a friend, Kindle is good for reading books and not that good for reading pdfs.

Ballinvarosig Investors, You mentioned that with Kindle DX, you get free internet for life. Can you please expand on this? I am curious if Kindle lets you surf the web and access email. TIA!