nodnub

Does Fairfax have much exposure to Los Angeles fires through reinsurance or P&C? I see headline estimates of 150B damages.

aren't these all quotes from "The Death of a Salesman"?

https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/23/donald-trump-speaking-style-interviews/ He used to sound (speak) a lot smarter (read attached article for proof). It's either: an intentional change (appeal to lowest common denominator with plain speech) or he has dementia or he has a brain-eating parasite. Or perhaps a combo of all three.

If a million people die (regardless of age) the economy would be trash anyways. Probably worse than it is right now (if that’s possible). Can you expand on this? If a million people die... would the economy necessarily be trashed? I'm interested in thoughts on this. -- I suppose if we got to point of 1million dead, we would have completely overwhelmed the health care system, and a lot more doctors and nurses would sicken and die from COVID. And many people would die from untreated heart attacks (et al) due to lack of medical care.

Thanks Nell-e for this post and bringing e-ink display back to my attention. I think they must have improved a lot because the old kindles took like 2 seconds to load each page (which I think was a limitation of the display refresh rate)

You suspect 100k+ to be infected. Let's say around 1000 died (10x the official amount to be really skeptical) which would mean that the death rate is still only about 1%. How do you calculate mortality rate when you don't know how many of the currently infected will eventually die (after say 2 weeks)? Isn't the only way to do that accurately to have a controlled population of confirmed, infected patients and then measure how many are dead after 2-3 weeks? I think the only way to get accuracy on that during the outbreak is to have a large group of infected individuals that you monitor. And right now it looks like pandemonium in any city that has a large group of infected cases (so it's hard to measure). That's what the Lancet study did for 41 patients in Wuhan and found that 6 out of 41 died (see under Discussion). Also virus continues to mutate over time and can become easier (or harder) to spread. Early version of "1918 spanish flu" were less fatal in Scandinavia in 1917. More fatal version of the same virus evolved in following year.

https://streamable.com/drpdz

A lot of my fellow employees are from Prague. One of the guys I work with bought a 70k Volvo x60 here in the states. He said that in two years when he returns he can resell the car in Prague and get 100% if not more back. Apparently he calculated the shipping and duty costs. I have not verified it myself, but seems like an interesting angle to take. Have to say I’m quite skeptical about it. In some countries you can import a used personal vehicle without paying much import duty. The import duty in some countries (e.g China) is very high on "luxury" foreign cars. This can make it profitable to import used cars after owning them overseas for a few years.

Hi Gregmal, is your comment from a US perspective. Key factor is that OP is in Canada. Many Canadian mutual funds have expenses of 2.5% and higher. High fees like that on a diversified portfolio of funds WILL have an outsized, negative impact on returns over long periods of time.

Those figures for health care costs in Czech republic sound way off base. Have you had a chance to verify that somehow. Keep in mind anecdotal evidence from taxpayers is not always true. For example, I cant count how many people I have met that dont understand fundamental personal finance stuff like marginal tax rates.

I set that sub-forum to ignore a long time ago. There are some good discussions there but they are needles in the haystack. From the outside it looks like a competition to see who can demonstrate the most cognitive biases and logical fallacies in a single post ;D

Hypothetically, what would you be willing to pay as a monthly fee for something like this? And how much do you think other people would be willing to pay?

I agree with you completely regarding the stupidity of taking on excessive debt that will not earn a ROI. Perhaps loans for college education should be rationalized and focus on degrees with a chance of employment. However, one problem is that many parents are too naive or even dumb to educate their children in these areas. Some of those children will educate themselves about personal finance (if they have the capacity and the interest), but we can't rely on that. We aren't doing enough with financial education in K-12 schools and that is time of life when you need to learn this stuff. Even children with low capacity and aptitude can improve through basic education. I have met a number of successful functional adults that can't understand their own credit card statements, let alone understand the fine print on personal loan terms. Debt is everywhere and it is designed to be easy for most people to get in too deep. If we want a society made of intelligent people making good decisions then we need to educate them well as children. If we want sheep to support the economy and only think about buying 60" TVs and new cars that they can't afford, then we should keep attacking and cutting K-12 education system.

"Surely you're joking..." is a great book. There are some other talks he has given on youtube which demonstrate how he thought and how he taught others..

I'm a long time Fairfax shareholder and supporter. I was also disappointed in the multi voting share changes. There has been discussion of the appropriateness of Ben amd Christine on the board... What about Karen Jurjevich? High school principal from Prem's daughter's high school. She could be a wonderful person and maybe a good friend of the Watsa family but how is that relevant as a board member at a company like Fairfax? Doesn't appear to have relevant experience and I can't imagine her relationship to the family would make her very independant while taking action as a board member? Karen L. Jurjevich Ms. Jurjevich is Principal of Branksome Hall, a leading private International Baccalaureate (IB) World School for girls located in Toronto, and is also the CEO and Principal of Branksome Hall Global. Prior to joining Branksome Hall in 1998, Ms. Jurjevich was a Principal in the Toronto District School Board and, from 1988 to 1992, taught at Havergal College in Toronto, Ontario. Prior thereto, Ms. Jurjevich held a number of teaching positions and was previously a member of the Board of the Canadian Accredited Independent Schools, the Board of the Conference of Independent Schools of Ontario, the International Baccalaureate, North American Independent Schools Task Force. Ms. Jurjevich recently graduated from the Stanford Executive Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.