Dinar

I have been long TLN - Talen for a while due to this.

I would not buy it. While the p/e is understated due to L'Oreal stake, there is essentially zero volume growth (which is obfuscated via RIG) and it is not clear where volume growth will come from.

Check Canadian withholding taxes. Sometimes these are treated as dividends and a non-retirement account will get hosed.

@John Hjorth, anyone who thinks that a KGB operative is an ok guy is a fool. Normal/moral people did NOT join the KGB. An organization that murdered more Soviet citizens than Hitler's Germany.

Could you please explain this? I assumed that cat policies were for one year, not for multiple years. Thank you.

New York and New Jersey for instance could easily have 4 bedroom house costing $2MM and have $50k in annual property tax. As a matter of fact, you would be hard to find a nice suburb within commuting distance of NYC in NJ and CT where property tax on a 4 bedroom house would be under $20k per annum. I am genuinely curious, where do you get a good health plan as a non-working individual paying $1500 per month for a family? I am not trying to be argumentative, I would gladly buy the heath plan! By the way, you are assuming no repairs for the house, and that appliances never break, and I do not see car expenses - which exist even if you pay cash. Also, you are missing insurance, which is several thousand a year at least.

Generally control trades at a premium. You should care because if Cockwell was happy to screw Brookfield shareholders, he will be happy to screw you too!

Jack Cockwell is the architect of Brookfield. Was the sale of Brookfield's stake an arms-length transaction?

Might work in Canada, will not work in the US due to an insanely expensive health care system, and property taxes in many places north of USD 30K per annum on a four bedroom home

Why do you think that the new government will end the war? It seems to me, that there is a broad consensus in Israel that Hamas and Hezbollah must be destroyed. I agree 100% with your point on rolling the dice.

@UK, thank you very much. Yes, coming with three kids, tied to the school schedule, oldest will be 9 and youngest almost 4. I would like to show my wife (born in Kiev) and my three kids (born in the US), the Baltics, so I would definitely go to Tartu, Talinn, Riga, Kaunas, Vilnius. None of us have been to Krakow, and I have never been to Scandinavia. For the kids' first European trip, I was debating between beach and culture (Prague, Paris.) I was thinking of Spain (Barcelona, Valencia) since it is easy to combine beach and culture, but yes, I have heard of the recent heat waves over the last couple of years.

Why do you think so? Let's say tomorrow Bibi and his crew lose the election, good riddance! What will change? In my opinion, nothing. Hamas is dedicated to wiping Israel off the map, so is Hezbollah. Say tomorrow Israel withdraws from Judea and Samaria and gives east Jerusalem to Palestinian Authority. Within 5 years, Hamas will run West Bank, and at some point, Hezbollah & Hamas will attack from three sides.

Yes, and money, but with the right woman, it is so worth it! People like you - wealthy, well rounded and educated should have kids, rather than people who don't care about their offspring. Perhaps you are depriving the world of the new Avicenna.

If you had a choice between spending the summer in Yurmala, German Baltic coast or Italy/Spain/Greece, which would you choose? If you would not choose Yurmala, why not? Thank you.

Why wouldn't you own Safran or GE? Better businesses and better growth prospects.

Dude, the Baltics were part of the Russian empire from 1740s (called Kurland) until 1917. Then USSR 1939-1941, Germany (1941-1944), and then USSR again 1944-1990. Lithuania did NOT expel Russian troops, there was the Soviet Army, and Lithuania did not have the ability to do it. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia left voluntary. Lithuania never had the means to expel anyone. Might as well say that Austria expelled the Soviet troops in 1955....

What is your thesis on Rentokil? Do you think that they can turn around the Terminix business? It seems that their organic revenue growth has been below inflation for at least five if not ten years.

Park Ohio (PKOH) - insider bought $1mm worth of stock. Weyerhauser (WY) - insider bought $1mm worth of stock. Does anyone have any view on any of these?

I don't care for Bibi. Actually, what you call a cockmammie theory was the original plan by the British - modern Jordan, called Transjordan to become an Arab state, and everything west of the Jordan river to become a Jewish state. There is no Palestinian people. There are Arab people, who have lived for at least two thousand years in modern Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Not sure, but I do not think that they lived in Egypt or Lebanon before the Muslim conquest. Similarly, Syrians, at least 2000 ago were distinct from the Arabs, and Romans distinguished between Syrians and Arabs. I hate to remind you, but the place west of the Jordan River was called Israel, Judea and Samaria until the Romans renamed it Palestina after one of the Judean revolts - either 133 AD or 72 AD. The people who lived their were Jews and Samaritans. Arabs did not live there. Gaza was called Gaza for ages, and while Jews have lived there for millenia, I don't know who else lived there besides the Jews, although clearly non-Jews have lived in Gaza as well for thousands of years. There was another Semitic people - the Nabateans, who built Petra, they may have been wiped out in the Arab conquest. I am not well versed in Nabatean history.

Gibbons was a good book. I really like books by Simon Sebag Montifiore (court of the Red Czar) and Fernaund Braudel

Well, they are both Semites. Who knows. According to the Islamic tradition, Arabs are children of Abraham by Hagar, if I am not mistaken, and Jews are his children by Sarah (I think.) I only read the old Testament and the New Testament (some three dozen years ago), flipped through the Koran and never read the Jewish holy books (Tanah, Talmud, the Prophets, etc...)

80% of Jordan's population are descendants of Arabs from West Bank, which by the way came from Arabia and Jordan. If Jordan is not a Palestinian state in all but name, then what is it?

Of course you can! Germans are not asking for Sudenland - a place where they had lived for 500+ years. Greeks are not asking for return of their historical lands in Turkey, neither are Armenians! They both had lived in Anatolia for more than 2000 years.

Houthis are not the problem, Iran is, or more precisely the current government of Iran. They are pulling strings behind the curtain.

Egypt never had a stake in the fight, and got paid handsomely with Sinai and US military aid. So why do they care? They don't have a stake. They refused to take Gaza back. Jordan is glad to wash its hands of the Palestinians. Or have you forgotten who killed the current king's grandfather and the attempted uprising in Jordan by Palestinians in 1970 - Black September? If you offered Judea and Samaria or West Bank with Jerusalem to Jordan, do you really think they will take it?