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tombgrt You are correct of course. But if a broker wants to see an overview of Fairfax, he would likely go to Fairfax's site. There is nothing 'wrong' with the Fairfax site, it is just not all it could be. The sites you quoted are examples.

I’m not trying to be argumentative, but I think some may have missed my point. Sure the site is functional, yes it seems informative, and no doubt it provides the information required by investors. But it definitely lacks on the presentation side. Fairfax is a big, worldwide company and it wouldn't hurt them to present a polished, attractive and interesting website. It is not just investors who are looking at this site, but it is the impression that it gives to brokers who sell their products and individuals and companies who purchase insurance. Today a corporate website is a major form of advertising. Like it or not, consumers tend to judge a company by the by their presence in the media - be it newspaper ads, radio copy, TV spots or a corporate website. What concerns me about this very lackluster website is that it raises a question about the competency of their public relations and marketing people. If they don’t realize the importance of the image they present on the web it doesn’t instill much faith in their abilities. For those of us who have discussed this regarding Fibrek's site, FBK progressed from essentially a non-functional site to the very nice site they have today. There is nothing “wrong” with the site, it is just a lot less than what it could be. Perhaps this is a work in progress and we will see some improvements in the coming weeks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...“How come those that are complaining about it aren't howling about BRK's website, or Leucadia?”... Jeez guys, don't get me started on them too! Just kidding. I don’t own them so it’s not really my place to comment. But just because there are other unattractive sites out there is not much of an excuse. I suspect all of these companies are attempting to present a formal type of site, but formal doesn't have to be plain and boring.

It is all perception. They say you can't judge a book by its cover - but many do. Impressions are important. If you are going to invest with someone or meeting with a real estate salesman and when they meet you for the first time you see them driving a beat up old car and are dressed in a sloppy manner, it doesn't make a very good impression. I don't care who you are or what you are selling (insurance or investments) it is always important to put forth a good impression. As someone once said " A shiny red apple will always sell better than a dull green one."

Pulp holding steady at $1,013.

Boring, unimpressive and a little amateurish. Surely a company like FFH can do better. It always concerns me about a company's marketing compentecy when something like this comes out. Reminds me of FBK who did this but later came out with quite a polished presentation. Perhaps FFH's site is just unfinished - looks like that anyway.

Smazz, -- Thanks for the kind words & everyone is welcome come to PEI. We were very lucky to have escaped the recession almost completely on PEI with the main exception being the fishing industry. But there's a plus side to that... Last spring you could buy 3, one pound cooked lobsters for $13.99 and I expect much the same this year. So you might want to come sooner than later! Re: Housing. In December 2010 CREA forecast sales on PEI to be down in 2011 by 11%. If that is true, no one seems to have told the construction industry. We are involved and are seeing our usual steady increases. Every year we wonder where all the people come from, but the houses seem to keep selling.

Hahaha - I'm not seeing that ad & what is showing on my screen is... "Hangover Cure Review Hangover Cures Reviewed Drink And Feel Fine The Next Day www.hangovercuresreview.com" ...seems "Sober College" has given up on us and someone else thinks we may need help??

Interesting thing we are seeing around here. With today’s communications and convenient air travel, people are to realize that they no longer have to live in the large centres. For example, on Prince Edward Island we see more and more people moving here to avoid those insane housing prices, high crime rates, and long commute times. I live three minutes from work, the city centre, two golf courses, two marinas and a beautiful beach are all just five minutes away. Yes, we have a murder every year or so - usually a domestic situation. But for the price of a forty year old bungalow in Vancouver you can own a luxury waterfront home. Recently we had a tech firm move here and re-locate all their entire staff. Companies like Investco-Trimark, CGI, and Ceridian have all set up major centres here recently. With New York, Boston, Detroit, Montreal and Toronto just a couple of hours away by air and fibre optic internet service cable becoming widely available, more people are finding they can work and run businesses from here just as efficiently and much more inexpensively than they can in the large centres. The bottom line is that there comes a point where some areas will simply price themselves out of the market. When you have a huge disparity in housing prices between different areas of the same country things are going to tend to level off because eventually people will realize that many businesses no longer have to be tied to large, overpriced centres.

But by definition, wouldn't you expect the price of stocks rise to keep pace with inflation? And with the same thought, cash becomes devalued.

Diet - Not the answer Exercise - Not the answer The answer is simple - Diet + Exercise The hard part is willpower.

Pulp prices are now $992.79 U$ for NBSK. I believe that RBK follows the price of NSKB so on the subject of RBK I thought the following was interesting. I don't know how accurate or up to date these figures are but it gives some idea of the value of recycling paper. While FBK's U.S. plants may not yet be profitable today there is no question that there will be increasing pressure put on the public, government and business to recycle paper. To my mind, that is a given. And as more waste paper comes in to the system, the cheaper it should become. As that occurs, those RBK plants are going to look more valuable as time goes on. And I believe they account for 48% of the U.S. RBK capacity. To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down. Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees. If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year! If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year. If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A busy supermarket could use all of them in under an hour! This means in one year, one supermarket can go through over 6 million paper bags! Imagine how many supermarkets there are just in the United States!!! The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year! The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years. Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S. Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person. The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail. In 1993, U.S. paper recovery saved more than 90,000,000 cubic yards of landfill space. Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution! The 17 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.

Nonub... "I read once that within 10 years of winning a large payout in the lottery, a large percentage of winners have spent the vast majority of the money or are completely broke." Funny you should mention that. Years ago I knew a carpenter who won $1,000,000 in a lottery when a million was a million and interest rates were in the 15%+ range. Rather than investing the money and living on the $150-$200,000 yearly interest, he squandered the money on renovations to his house in a very low rent district, bowed to pressure put on him by his "friends" to pay off their mortgages, bought all his kids 4-wheelers and cars, etc. About 10 years later he was broke. However I still think that spreading the money around would be of greater benifit in general. If nothing else, some of that money would filter down into numerous smaller communities where it really would make a difference. Turar - I know what you mean, but things are a bit different here in Canada as usually the full amount is paid out and I think it is tax exempt.

This is a bit off-topic, but related in a way. Nothing irritates me more than those big lottery prizes. I would like to see a legislated maximum that can be awarded of say $2,000,000. When we have winners of $50 mil and greater it can take a lot of that money out of circulation. Sure the winner may build a nice new house, buy a couple of cars, and give some to family or whatever, but if that $50 mil was given out as 25 $2 mil prizes we might have 25 new houses 50 new cars etc. In other words, it puts much more of the money back into circulation and probably would spread the funds over a wider geographical area as well. It also gives ticket buyers a better chance of winning. Just my little rant. Anyway, I rarely buy lottery tickets and confine most of my gambling instincts to the TSX, etc.

Canaccord has apparently rated FBK a buy with a target of $2.30.

And SJ's timeline is probably optimistic and doesn't include the legal fees FFH is incurring. Now don't get me wrong because I fully support this law suit and believe that the legal cost is money well spent. It is a story that needs to be told and if it cost a few dollars in share price then I would gladly contribute my share just for entertainment value alone. Of course there could come a point where a settlement might be reached. However, since this involves a very personal attack on Prem I wouldn't want to bet on a settlement any time soon. This case involves a lot more than money. There are egos and reputations at stake here.

This has been a long time coming hasn't it? But it seems that the shi* has finally started to hit the fan and the chickens are beginning to come home to roost. Given the number of news articles that have been published in the past few days I think that this story is finally going to start to snowball to the point where it will get the exposure it deserves. The next few weeks could be very interesting. Does anyone know if this case has actually gone to trial or is this just discovery? Or is it done differently in tue US?

Good grief if they can build soft walls at super speedways to protect race drivers travelling well over 200 mph surely someone could figure out that those stantions need to be padded. If the police are looking at charging someone in this matter perhaps they should be discussing a negligence charge with the forum owners. I mean, it doesn't take a genius to see the danger that they present.

Eva Mendes !!

In Canada we can contribute a cumulative $5,000 per year into a Tax Free Savings Account. The name "Savings" is a little misleading as it can be used for most types of investments. So with the maximum now up to $15,000, how do board members use their TFSA - agressive of conservative? Since neither losses nor gains effect taxes, do you use it for your riskier investments or do you put in investments that are reasonably sure to produce a gain? Being optimistic, there is unlimited upside and limited downside ($15,000), but a tax loss takes some of the sting out of a bad decision.

Interesting quote from a school board meeting in Virginia "The recycling issue was further explored during the meeting. The company contacted, Fibrek Recycling Plant, pays $115 to $120 a ton for office waste. "I don't know, with gas prices the way they are, if it's worthwhile," commented Ms. Kimble." Among other things it tells an idea of what they are paying for waste and from the last report it seems they get the same for RBK as NBSK.

Rather interesting that this conversation is going on at the same time as a little deja vu is taking place on the Yahoo Fairfax board. http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_F/forumview?bn=24033 That board had been more or less dormant since the NYSE de-listing with posts only now and again, but over the past few days has become more lively under the thread "Concerns about Fairfax Unfounded". It's almost like we were back in 2006-7. Perhaps some board members here are defending FFh over there as there have been a few well informed posts over the past few months. Perhaps some of them should be invited over here if they haven't found us.

I wondered if that was the case. I was just looking at the chart again and FBK stayed at about $1.00 for five months and it was only about 2 months ago that it jumped by 40-50%. This just strengthens my curiosity about the timing of the insider buys and makes me think that there could be good things to come and perhaps not all that far in the future.

So two of the smarter guys on this board sold, which for me would be a strong indication that it may be time to get out. But on the other hand, we finally see some serious insider buying at long last and I have to ask myself why would Cote spend $180,000 of his own money buying shares at $1.40+ unless he was pretty sure there was an upside? Until I saw that, I was thinking like Myth, that this might be a good place to build up a little cash. But I find the timing interesting. With FBK sitting at $1.00 for so long you have to wonder why Mr. Cote would choose to buy shares at this point? I wouldn't suggest that he was aware of anything concrete that might cause a jump in share price, but he could well have indications that there could be something happen in the near future that would positively impact share price. For instance, if he knew an offer was being made for the company, a share purchase at this time would probably be insider trading. However, if he knew that there were a couple of companies seriously sniffing around, then that would be fair game would it not? Or perhaps he just feels that the company is undervalued and knows that the company will be taking steps to improve its image in the eyes of investors in the future. Either way, I think I will stick around for a bit here.

Re management buying shares. Now that's interesting because the more management has personally invested in this company, the more incentive they would have to promote and shop FBK because if the company goes, their jobs probably go as well. However if they can make enough from their personal holdings then that may be a different story. Considering that they could have bought in for a lot less a few months ago this would seem to be a good omen for shareholders. I wonder if an offer is in the wind?

"Do you have links to posts from that past to get up to speed on that story? Specially I would like to know the roles of Hempton, Loeb, Cohen and Einhorn. I also wonder about B. McLean role: loved her book on Enron but I wonder if she is too close to some of the hedgies." Try the "Deep Capture" web site for some of the background information. As far as Ms McLean is concerned I believe she lost all credibility in this matter.