Munger_Disciple

Carol Loomis's article on the buyback: http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/12/12/berkshire-buffett-buyback/ Sorry if it is already posted.

Ericopoly, Doesn't the estate still need to pay estate tax to the govt?

I totally support cuts in defense as well as in entitlements.

Rimm, I don't know what others' arguments are and that someone else you referred to is not posting here. So let us stick to the merits/flaws in the argument presented w/o name calling. Anyhow, the main point made is still valid: an investor in a corporation still pays (indirectly) corporate income taxes. So, he/she is not paying zero taxes even if there is no dividend income or capital gains. By the way, I have been a shareholder of Berkshire for more than 10 years, and I deeply admire & respect Buffett. I happen to disagree on some (but not all) aspects of his arguments. In general I favor a more balanced taxation/spending approach with tax increases being part of the solution. I also think current lower dividend/cap gains taxes get a bad rap (when compared to ordinary rates) as if those are the only taxes an investor pays. I realize that reasonable people may disagree.

Do not keep making statements like this as if you know what motivated my posts and keep the discussion civil.

Rimm, I respectfully request that you keep personal attacks out of this superb board.

The issue is that Buffett is comparing taxes on investment income (in general unearned income) of an individual with earned income of an employee. So it only only fair (for apples to apples comparison) that he takes into account all the taxes paid by an investor either directly or indirectly. Especially since he takes into account the payroll taxes paid by the employee in addition to income taxes paid by the employee to arrive at the total taxes on earned income. For the record, I am not against higher tax rates per se, but I dearly would like to see the sending cuts materialize. Otherwise, if one wants to know what will happen to the US, he/she simply needs look at California (I live here). We have the highest income tax rates and sales tax rates in the country, and we still have huge state & local budget deficits because our politicians simply do not address the spending issue.

I thought the best question Stewart asked Buffett was about the argument of double taxation. In other words, if you own stock in a company, you are basically paying your share of corporate taxes (paid on your behalf by the company) in addition to any dividend and capital gains taxes. I thought Buffett's reply was evasive and did not really answer the question. The question was a general one, and not about capital gains paid on bonds.

Did anyone understand Berkowitz's take on Sears? He says that it is worth multiples of its current price, but does not back up his thesis with any meaningful data. Similarly, he says BAC's normalized earning power is $4 per share(!) without any backup data. It must seem high for even extreme optimists on BAC.

Thanks Txlaw. The last quarter 10-Q says that credit facility expires in 2016 & the 1.25B LT debt issued in 2010 matures in 2018. And these are carried at favorable rates. So it seems like SHLD still has a reasonable time window if they decide to put most of the retail business into runoff mode and become a real estate play. But Lampert has to act fast. My guess is that 2011 Q4 to date sales at Sears are bad because of their emphasis on home appliances in addition to the fact that not many people go to Sears anymore for clothing & electronics. If (and this is a major if) the housing recovers in 2012, it may finally help Sears' appliance sales.

Does the holding company guarantee the debt of Sears domestic & Kmart? From what I can tell, the domestic credit agreement and the LT bonds are asset backed by the inventories of Sears dom & Kmart only.

I still cannot print these notes.

Can you get option quotes inside a Google Spreadsheet using Googlefinance function or any other function?

Truly a sad day. The greatest tech leader, visionary & CEO of our lifetime. A perfectionist. He will be dearly missed.

augustabound, I disabled all the extensions to Chrome, and it seems to work much faster now. I need to try this during the work week when the web sites have heavier traffic to see if this is indeed the problem or not. If it still works during the week, I will try to enable these extensions one by one and see which one is the culprit. Thanks for your suggestions. Smazz, it looks like your question about History button was already answered by others.

augustabound, I tried your setting, but it did nothing for me interms of speed with www.businessinsider.com. By the way, schwab.com is also very slow with Chrome. Smazz, you can find the setting under the wrench button, preference, under the hood.

I have recently switched Chrome on my Mac and it is in general way faster than my previous browser firefox. However, I have noticed that some sites seem to load more slowly in Chrome. www.businessinsider.com is one site that loads very slowly. Have others seen this problem with some web sites?

The article points out that Ireland just imposed a tax on personal pension plans, thus reneging on past promises. It may be unlikely in the US, but not impossible.

http://www.businessinsider.com/will-congress-raid-your-roth-iras-2011-5 An interesting article on the possibility of government taxing Roth IRAs. There were a lot of discussions about the tax efficiency of Roth vs. regular IRA in the past on this board.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-22/berkshire-board-would-support-reinsurance-head-jain-for-ceo-buffett-says.html?cmpid=yhoo Buffett says Ajit can be the CEO if he wants the job! Wow! This it the first time he said it so openly even though he hinted at it many times in the AR.

I agree completely. I think Maboussin adds almost nothing new to the topic of dividends & buybacks. What he says is obvious and I don't know why spends so many pages saying it. Is his job at Legg Mason just writing articles?

In my previous post, I meant Berkshire sold a portion of Coke holding thru' the Genre transaction.

Actually, Buffett did "sell" large cap stocks like Coke, Amex, and others in 1998 by acquiring Gen Re for all stock transaction when Berkshire shares were trading at a significant premium to book. In other words, he sold ownership in Coke to Gen Re shareholders while receiving their bond portfolio in exchange in a tax free manner. Pure genius! It is the opposite of idiotic Kraft transaction with the Pizza business sale. An unintended consequence however of the Genre transaction is that Berkshire also inherited Genre underwriting problems which were eventually fixed. Regarding the Fairfax conference call, I thought Watsa punted a very good question from Jaideep. It is very disappointing. Can you imagine Buffett ever not answering such a question when the whole purpose of the call is to answer shareholder questions?

CFO Atkins retiring. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Wells-Fargo-Announces-CFO-bw-3804984180.html?x=0&.v=1

Correcting spelling: Never in my life I have seen more people I respect holding so much cash.