ERICOPOLY

I have common, $3 strike calls, and "A" warrants. Very few $10 calls. Hoping for no dividends ever. Better to just use that cash to buy shares that I can in turn sell and come out way ahead by not paying taxes on my cost basis. I might find only 48 cents on the dollar left of my dividend very soon here (dividends taxed at top income rate + ObamaCare investment tax + California state income tax). I mean jeeze... can't the BAC's of the world just get rational and stop talking about raising dividends? What a waste of my shareholder capital.

It would be best to hold the mayo.

Gary Shilling argues that home ownership rates are mean reverting. I do too, only I look further into the data than he does -- I recognize that the new blended (all age groups) home ownership rate will be higher than in the past because of the shifting age demographic (more top heavy because of the boomers).

Seattle nearly led the nation in unemployment that year. Rents were higher in 2000 vs 2002. The tech bust was especially painful in Seattle. I was a landlord of two single family homes at that time (Kirkland and West Seattle) -- I remember it well.

If you look at any age category under 55 (census data), home ownership rates are lower at the end of 2011 than at any point in history going back 50 years (as far as the data goes). So, if historical trends per age category hold, then home ownership rates will CLIMB from here.

Same story here, Seattle region. My house is being listed for sale tomorrow.

It would be a first if an economic clairvoyant were always to be correct in every call they've ever made. So, no, I don't think they lose any credibility. You have to question why anyone believes a forecaster will be infallible, and then for them to "lose faith" in that person if they finally make a bad call.

Al, I'll bet you $5K that coal will still be terrific 100 years from now for barbecuing! It won't matter...ribs will still taste good, even if there are other ways of cooking them. That competitive advantage will never dissipate even if GE comes up with a better way to nuke food. ;D Are you man enough to take my bet? I'll let you and Ericopoly go halfsies on that offer, because I know neither one of you are man enough to take me on alone. Heck, add Stone19 to the list too, because I've had pulled pork on his Green Egg and he uses two types of wood along with his special Green Egg coal. He won't use normal coal by itself! ;D And he uses those sissy Carolina BBQ sauces too...no tomato base! Now Matt and Joe are probably gonna jump on me, because they're from North Carolina and they're used to those sauces...any way, I digress...back to coal being the energy source of the future and natural gas will never replace it...just never will happen and I've got $5K riding on it...because as we all know, objects moving in a straight line will never, ever deviate, will they? Cheers! I too have a Big Green Egg. It doesn't get as much use these days for two reasons: 1) I'm still stuck in the Seattle region and, yes, it was Winter once again today!. 2) I tried to cut meat out of my diet. I will make pulled pork again this year, but only a couple of times. I will experiment with roasted veggies. Nine more days until I'm burning rubber out of my driveway headed for Santa Barbara.

How much are the settlement opponents going to be happy with? $20b more? Has it been reported anywhere?

I thought that there is (was?) a limit on income w.r.t Roth conversion -- i.e., you can't convert if your incoming is over certain limit, you have to roll over to a traditional IRA. There was no income limit on Roth IRA conversions for 2010, 2011, and 2012. Not sure about the future. I converted 1/2 of mine in 2008 -- a big mistake not converting the whole thing that year. Then I converted the second 1/2 of it in early 2009 but had to abort later in the year and push the conversion out to 2010. Then I had the taxable amount from the 2010 conversion split into 2011 and 2012 tax years. They don't let you split them out to future years anymore (at least not on 2012 conversions). The ORH buyout by Fairfax stuffed up my plans of not taking any gains in 2009 -- that was why I wound up blowing through the income limits. Otherwise it was the perfect plan.

After I left they started offering a self-directed 401k, although I'm not sure if they allow options trades. However I did benefit from the Roth conversion.

Gretzky. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

I'm also considering that: Europe depends on the US more than vice versa. For example, US purchases about 8.8% of Germany's exports, but Germany purchases about 4.1% of US exports. Exports are more than 40% of Germany's GDP whereas they're only 13% or so of US GDP. So no, I don't think looking at how US subprime spilled over to Europe is a terrific analogy. The US GDP falling off a cliff in 2008 and 2009 was much more painful to them.

So is this your position: The US banks today are loaded up with European risk the same way that European banks were loaded up with US subprime?

I'm still up 40% YTD. There, I jinxed it and you can take that as a sign to sell everything tomorrow.

This is how I would treat some of the posters bordering on hysterical: Just kidding. Everyone has a right to their opinion. And for those who as despairing over not having sold -- and are now feeling the tight collar:

Aside from the plummeting real estate that had lots of room left to fall, you had: Bear Stears Countrywide IndyMac Wamu Wachovia Merrill AIG Lehman GM Fannie Freddie Citigroup and on and on and on You had real estate prices falling off the cliff and everybody losing their jobs en masse. Then you had short selling bans. TARP. Money market funds breaking the buck. There is nothing that I see in this Europe quagmire that is uniquely terrifying for America this time around. We don't export much to them as a % of GDP. Yes, it will not be a positive for America, but grounds to completely freak out???? And what do you mean that equity prices haven't reacted yet? WFC trades at the same price today as what it did at the end of 2008. There never was a recovery! There once was a time (not too long ago) when "rising recession risks" didn't mean the large banks should trade at 5x-7x multiples at a time when they are well capitalized -- in fact the best ever.

Now, if Berkshire were to purchase Morton Salt they could preserve The Great One forever.

Imagine you have $100m that you want to save. What are your alternatives? You don't have FDIC protection (and there is no reasons why bank accounts can't have negative rates), and you can't put that in a safe under your bed. Sure, regular Joe's with $5,000 don't have to accept negative rates, but they aren't the majority of deposits. Not arguing that we will see those rates, but I'm just saying that there is some reason for why T-Bill yields sometimes go negative. It could happen for longer dated issues too. Ben To protect $100m you only need to purchase 400 certificates of deposit -- each one from a different bank. The $250,000 in FDIC protection is only the limit of protection that you have from each individual bank. Untrue...time to do a refresher on FDIC insurance limits and the flexibility of using beneficiaries on accounts...or even easier instead of buying a negative bond put it in a non-interest bearing account which is fully secured with no limit on FDIC insurance. http://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/index.html Thanks for pointing that out.

Imagine you have $100m that you want to save. What are your alternatives? You don't have FDIC protection (and there is no reasons why bank accounts can't have negative rates), and you can't put that in a safe under your bed. Sure, regular Joe's with $5,000 don't have to accept negative rates, but they aren't the majority of deposits. Not arguing that we will see those rates, but I'm just saying that there is some reason for why T-Bill yields sometimes go negative. It could happen for longer dated issues too. Ben To protect $100m you only need to purchase 400 certificates of deposit -- each one from a different bank. The $250,000 in FDIC protection is only the limit of protection that you have from each individual bank.

Both of those banks are seeing share price gains today.

Complete nonsense.. only people with no understanding of geology or mining would even consider asteroid mining anymore than a pipe dream... Nonsense???? Oh, and I suppose you have your doubts for their other articles too??? Seems like legit reporting to me: http://aceflashman.wordpress.com/category/people/

A black swan for the gold bugs ;) http://aceflashman.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/solid-gold-asteroid-head-for-earth-world-economy-in-peril/

Long term: Productive assets the winner (gold and cash losers) Short term: Gold can dramatically underperform cash in a global meltdown -- just look at October 2008 if you deny this My conclusion: Hold cash if you are interested in buying at bottom of global meltdown over a short-term horizon. Otherwise hold productive assets. That leaves no room for gold. I believe that's what Buffett's position on this is.

That's a 10% gain over April's number. We'll be adding over 500k jobs per month a year from now given this month-over-month pace of improvement.