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Sanjeev, I wish her the best of the luck. It sounds like she is in great hands. With these relatively rare conditions, it is almost certainly best to be treated by one the few dedicated specialists who have the most experience both with the diagnosis - which as twacfa alluded to can be very hard to make - and the many evolving treatments. It is nice to hear she has found someone like that. M.

I am not an expert on this condition, so please think of these comments as only general musings. While I was a Resident, however, I did spend some time working with a Surgeon who dealt with this condition quite a bit. As you probably already know it involves the dysfunction of a nerve - usually after a minor trauma to the nerve - that results in a hyperalgesic (pain out of keeping with the stimulus) response to the affected area. There seem to be varying degrees of the condition and in the worst cases the affected area becomes discolored and cool, and can be so sensitive to the touch that folks can feel even light touches as excruciating pain. There are some medications that are specifically intended to target pain from malfunctioning nerves (neuropathic pain), and these tend to be tried first, but they can be of little benefit to people with the worst forms of complex regional pain syndrome, which also goes by the name reflex sympathetic dystrophy just to complicate things needlessly. The Surgeon I worked with performed a relatively new type of procedure where he would implant spinal stimulators to try and relieve the pain of those with the worst form of the condition. These stimulators would activate the sensory part of the spinal cord corresponding to the patient's site of pain and replace the pain with a sort of buzzing sensation, which in theory patients would find more tolerable. The whole thing was meant to work on the gate theory of pain - the idea that essentially we can only really feel any one thing at a time and when subjected to multiple sensory stimuli we tend to block some out. As I recall, and this was about 5 years back, there weren't any large studies that validated this treatment. The condition itself is so rare, it would probably be very hard to study it in large groups. Of the folks I saw who had the nerve stimulators implanted (4 or 5 patients), some had a great response, while others noticed no improvement. All of them were usually at their wits end by the time they saw this surgeon and were willing to try just about anything. And of course as with any procedure, I would recommend asking a Surgeon what their individual rates of success and complication rates were. I hope these general comments are helpful. Feel free to send me a personal message if you had any specific follow-up questions. M.

The funny thing is I have been sent links to this video from several friends. And everytime I get it, I open it and watch the video again. Man this guy is hilarious. By the end of it, I can't help asking "Mr. Market, how did you get on the BBC?" M.

Wow! That just came way out of left field. This raises an interesting question in my mind: Would someone with the entrepreneurial drive and passion needed to run a successful company be interested in essentially working as an employee for Berkshire? (And the corollary, would Buffett be willing to reward his top Manager with enough equity to make it worthwhile for them? Something he has previously been loath to do.) It is interesting that Sokol mentioned he wanted to explore more entrepreneurial endeavors where he could build up substantial equity in the business. I wonder if something similar factored into Li Lu's decision not to take the Chief Investment position. Fascinating, to say the least. m.

This is interesting news for sure. As you mentioned Myth, the terms of the Conv. Preferreds will be key. I doubt the new investor will be Appleseed directly - their AUM are only $133million. The Appleseed Fund Manager is Perkin, Singer, Strauss Asset Management and they manage $500million in total, so they are unlikely to be the investor either. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. If the new Preferreds are convertible at $5 (resulting in a diluted share count of 36 million), the K-Sea General partner can forget about getting incentive distributions going forward which are only triggered when the fund distributes $2/share/Year to Limited Partners. Here is to hoping they agreed to a deal where they pay a fat dividend to the preferred (10-13%), but demanded a high conversion price ($15 or higher). Regardless of conversion price, the shares are worth >$5, IMHO. The new equity issue almost completely eliminates the risk of Bankruptcy, and even with the worse case dilution, if the company generates greater than $18 million in FCF it could easily support a $0.50 annual dividend yield. That being said, the whole current structure of this company as a MLP incentivizes management to behave badly over the long-term. Their incentive is to distribute greater than $2/share/year at any cost so that they trigger their incentive distributions, and doing so is what destroyed the balance sheet and left them so vulnerable to a downturn in what is a notoriously cyclical industry. It is a terrible structure, but the fact that management's hands are now tied works in an investor's favor so long as they realize this is a cigarette butt in its current form. M.

Interesting, indeed. The numbers are not quite as great as they might seem at first. The quoted price in US cents is 110 ($1.10) as is the NAV of 67.07 ($0.6707) and earnings per share of 9.58 ($0.0958). So in reality, you are buying at a touch below 1.5X book, for a PE ratio of a touch more than 11. Decent, but perhaps a little rich for Zimbabwe. Made me want to look a little bit more closely though. I'll let you know if I find something interesting. M.

Congrats to all who stuck this one out. In hindsight, I have got to hand it to management. Some of the executive decisions that helped surface value (buying CHI, converting 767's and buying a few more) were ones I opposed at the time as wasting precious cash. It seems they were able to do it just right - pay down debt, and employ their assets at exceptional rates of return. That being said, it seems to me the value was always there. The pain was in watching the price sink, month after month for those who bought at $2, then 1.50, then 0.90, then 0.34, and finally the rock bottom price of 0.16. Somedays I thought it would have been better if one could ignore these quotations altogether lest they infect our rational thinking. In the end, the market was wrong, and the patient investor was right. It never ceases to amaze me. (No comment for those whose average price was $6-7. I always thought the company was fully valued there). All the best, M.

The thesis is working out as previously stated by a number of people here, including cardboard. DHL is honouring their put agreements, which include taking the underwater capital leases (5 767s which were held at a book value of 20million but had a lease liability of 50million). As for, the note, that was a pleasant surprise, but is not altogether irrational. There were days when people felt ATSG was a zero, but the puts always gave it value, as did its ongoing, business with Bax Schenker through CHI. We still have a long way to go for most folks to break even, my average price is around this point only because I averaged down heavily in the 0.16-0.20 days. I still maintain that the intrinsic value is at a minimum book value ($3.50-$4.00) and possibly $6.00-$7.00 as a going concern. As uncertainties start to settle out, we will see. This is definitely a 2-3 year hold. (For my valuation numbers look at the old MSN BRK archives). M.