Dinar

You do not seem to know your history. During WWII, first German soldiers committed unspeakable atrocities in the former USSR, and then Soviet soldiers avenged this with mass rapes in Germany.

You will officially become an old man when given a choice between going out with a beautiful girl and having a quiet evening at home you choose the latter!

Agreed. For instance, if BIAL goes public, and the market assigns value similar to GMR + real estate at the airport gets marked as well, BIAL stake could go up 3-5x over the next four years, which between 20% of the top and 40% or so ownership of Fairfax India would give you another $5bn+ uplift to book value at Fairfax Financial.

You are forgetting about taxes, operating earnings are before tax.

Agree on Turkey and Germany, but Yugoslavia no longer exists. Neither Serbia nor Croatia are part of NATO.

It was posted within the last two days.

Why did you sell YELLQ? Thank you.

Sure, Charter comes to mind.

No, what I believe is that unskilled immigration depresses wages paid to low income workers. If you would like to see their wages rise, like I do, you need to eliminate unskilled immigration and help those low income workers who want and can to become skilled tradesmen - carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc... The benefit of gutting social services is manifold - good for people for their dignity and mental well being, reduces crime (when people don't work, they tend to look for trouble), boosts GDP as those workers join the labor force, crime reduction benefits society in a myriad of ways. Government has more tax revenue without changing tax rates, etc... Larger labor force is also good reducing inflationary pressures. But no, I am NOT saying that decreasing unskilled labor force leads to lower wages, just the opposite.

You are 100% correct, but I would add also that incentives matter. When you get free groceries + food stamps, Medicaid, subsidized/free housing, welfare, et all, what is the point of working for most low income workers? You tax those who work more and more so more and more people can sit on welfare.

I agree with everything that you say, but I think that if you include state & local government spending, the figure is more than 40% of GDP.

Would work great for something like the Rockettes - 100+ shows with different demand for each.

Keyzer soze says hello

I think BIAL will be IPOed this year, may be via Anchorage, but it should generate several billion dollars of book value increase or at least show how undervalued it is on the company's books.

EQC

Why? Thank you.

Actually this is blatantly false. Any illegal immigrant in any state has the right to send his kids to public school and go to the hospital even if he has no ability to pay. This is mandated by federal law.

CASY

You can easily have a zero budget deficit in this country and real GDP 20-40% higher with reforms. The trouble is how are we going to get reforms? 1) School vouchers could probably cut the cost of public education in half, and 75% in NYC while improving quality. 2) Ending government guarantee of student loans which cost tens if not hundreds of billions per annum, and also are a drastic misallocation of resources. 3) Gut welfare/food stamps/section 8/public housing/medicaid, etc that cost federal government hundreds of billions per annum and destroy any incentive to work. This will also send millions of people into the labor force to do something productive. 4) Reform FEMA and similar agencies. There is no reason why people should get hundreds of thousands of dollars to live in paradise. 5) End foreign aid - why are we spending $100bn+ per annum on foreign aid? 6) Reform HB-1 visa programs - this program should exist only for truly outstanding people, so charge companies $50K per annum per employee. That way really valuable people will still get in, while people who are just cheaper than Americans and depress wages cannot come in. 7) Reform tax code - my proposal: a) No deductions, period b) First 50K of income is not taxable for individuals, first $100K not taxable for individuals with kids, first $100K not taxable for married filing jointly, first 200K not taxable for married filing jointly c) 30% federal tax rate on earned income d) 20% LTCG & dividends e) End non-taxability of muni bonds

If they had been intellectually honest, they would have addressed BIAL.

Fairfax this morning at the open

Prepare for fireworks today, Muddy Waters with a short report on Fairfax

Don't forget there is a lot of debt, if I remember correctly, L 40bn, now you do have a stake in ITC that is worth around L 15bn, but if you look at it on EV/EBIT basis, the multiple is not cheap 6x EBIT or 8x post tax.

If I am not mistaken, the US business is 50% of EBIT, and I would guess that 90-95% is cigarettes.

I'd be careful here. 10% volume declines in the US business are serious business. I was hoping that it'd stop in 2023, but it has continued in 2024.