rranjan

Case is similar to Man with a hammer syndrome.... You won't be able to present any arguments which will fly. I personally have never fired a shot and don't have any fixed view on everyone carrying a gun. If data( right one) suggest that society with gun controls have better record in preventing violent crimes then we should consider this point strongly. This freedom to carry weapon argument is fine but it goes over board with next step of everyone being allowed to carry whatever government has(nukes)..., World will cease to exist in 5 minutes. It is impossible to control 6 billion people. Logically you can't have public access to destructive techs like nukes which might wipe out everyone. Freedom or no freedom, you can't allow a situation which will wipe out everyone. Being able to carry automatic weapon which can fire 60-100 bullets in minute may fall in some what similar category but far less destructive. You need only few mentally disturbed people and they can kill 100s before they can be stopped. It's a grey area where line has to be drawn. I don't know at which point but I would think mentally sick people having capacity to kill 100's in 1 minutes is too high a cost for my freedom to carry such weapons. Carrying gun for defense should not extend to weapons like rocket launchers otherwise you will have few mentally sick causing 1000s of death within seconds. As far as the argument about government killing innocents and then asking for freedom to carry nukes goes - case is similar to man with hammer syndrome. It starts with full freedom/no government control and ends there. Torture everything to fit into that model without cost involved. As I said, I don't have fixed opinion on everyone being allowed to carry a gun but I strongly feel you can't allow public access to hugely destructive tech. What constitute that tech and where to draw a line can be argued.

This has been discussed previously in other posts about Buffett and tax rates. The rich do not pay a lower rate on average than the middle class. Buffett has to allocate both halves of payroll taxes to the individual, ignore untaxed medical benefits, ignore the return of those payroll taxes at retirement, ignore that dividends and capital gains are already taxed (or likely will be) at the corporate level, and include all deductions to lower the actual income of the middle class for his analysis to work. It is sloppy IMO. No. Corporate tax is totally different thing. Bunch of people form a corporation and take huge risk. If it blows up then they don't become bankrupt and some time society as a whole pays the price of those blow ups. Essentially, corporate is a separate legal entity. If corporate pays tax then it can not be counted for individuals because corporations are paying tax for some privilege and that privilege does not come free. End of the day how much money an individual makes? That's what matters. That cash is taxable. Cash can come as result of physical labor or money pushing, it should not make any difference. There are different mechanisms for people to earn their money. Some earn it by working in coal mines and some earn it by pushing money. End result is they earned XYZ money and both should pay similar tax rates. Person making money by pushing money does not do it in vacuum. Support system created by society is used by money pushers to make money. Corporate tax is price for that support system. Dividend and capital gains are income for an individual. Before this income is generated , bunch of things happened in background. You can not start counting those things and claim that individual has paid some tax.

I don't have any opinion about tax rates but I have strong opinion about everyone paying similar rates. Arguing that taxing rich does not solve this problem because it is only 10% of deficit is very weird logic. Covering 10% or even 1% should not be a point of discussion. Why even for a minute ultra rich needs favorable treatment as compared to working class. That should be fixed quickly. Argument about not fixing it till XYZ happens baffles me. Do we want a two separate class in US?

If anyone is convinced with "cannot be trusted" part then business being good or bad is irrelevant. I strongly put him in "cannot be trusted" category due to his record.

Actually these letters are standard practice. If I remember correctly in these letters, folks are trying to convey that he did not directly benefit by sharing information. That is consistent with their previous experience with Rajat Gupta. So yes, he broke the law but defense is trying to show over all character of Gupta. As pointed above, personal relationship is also a factor but I highly doubt that same folks will write letters if he was making money by sharing insider information.

They have tie up with lenders which allows students to get loan with very lenient terms. It won't be efficient use ot money if you have to support students after getting into IIT. Most students gets placed in campus in their 4th year and they can afford to pay the loan back. Simply, there is no need to support students after they get admission in IIT.

It was an interesting read.

Thanks for posting it here.

Buffett's and Berkowitz's picks are some what easy to understand. I some time don't understand why Klarman bought a specific security. Prem's picks are sometime low on quality curve for my liking. I think it works for him as a basket though. Having said that I agree with your sentiments fully.

Around 3B if I don't have any other information about this company except what we have in this sheet.

I feel AIG is bit ahead in turn around but I find BAC easier to understand. Story might unfold quicker with AIG and it will be ideal if both of them work out at different time.

Same problem with Biglari Holdings, right? And yet, my firm is also a Biglari Holdings shareholder! Let's just say that I don't mind paying for performance. On page 7 of the presentation in attachment you can see that Greenlight Re increased book value per share at 11,7% CAGR from the beginning of 2005 to the end of 2011. During one of the most difficult period of the last 50 years! And I am exited to see what they can do during more normal times! Bilgari is different and bigger problem. His track record shows that he will keep changing the rule in middle of the game. In Greenlight, you know what you are getting into but not with Bilgari. Apple to Orange comparison.

You can talk to few fund managers who mange individual accounts with some common sense. You can start with some small amount with the person you like and have your wife involved in this process to get familiar with everything. If you feel that an individual will do a better job than you then you can hand over your whole portfolio as well otherwise just keep it to minimum. Person has to be very honest with decent skills. Avoid anyone who has good skills but not so trust worthy. You are only in your 30s so you have plenty of time to find out some one you may like and trust as well. Index is also a decent option in your hypothetical situation but I don't like it very much.

They already got this wrong. If they keep shifting the time line then eventually they will be right( be it 6 moth or 5 years).

Due to short term interest rates being near zero and having so much deposits, most big banks are reducing their long term debt. In normal environment they used to roll over their long term debt but right now it seems they are better off by reducing their long term debt.

Those kids genius will be doing some manual work if not pulled through this system. Capitalism comes into the picture by making sure that donated money gets biggest bang for buck. Spending the same amount of money in anything else will not produce the tangible results it produces via this system. Not only the future of kids get changed but people around him change as well.

I am aware of that because they will get good rank in AEEE and get good seats in NIT and as you said in some cases in US/American schools. I brought up IIT seat & rank equation because this is the first time rank list is almost twice the number of seats, which surprised me.

I got the information only today about 73 making it to IIT-JEE rank. Fantastic effort by foundation. Just a quick information: 560,000 students appeared this year. All 73 might not get a seat in IIT even though they are in rank list. Rank list has almost twice the number of seats available in IIT. I do think that majority of them will get a seat because lot of students at Dakshana are from underprivileged class. There are reserved seats for them once they get a rank in IIT. I was trying to convince some one else to replicate this approach in different country. They wanted to set up a foundation but wanted biggest bang for money used. Problem was finding a leveraged set up like IIT, where only cost is to put the students there. Fantastic execution by Mohnish and team. It was not easy to pull it off. Once of the similar effort is done by another person. See below, http://www.super30.org/ Infact, Mohnish wanted this guy to scale it up and he wanted to give money to him but he did not take the offer. I think he did provide some help in setting up a process for identifying bright but poor students at Dakshana who can be further coached to join IIT.

We are all ears. You can talk as much as you want :)

He kept shifting the goalpost and fooled most people to get what he wanted.

I have seen many members having opinion about macro but I am not sure how many actually end up buying or selling based on their opinion on macro. I find it very difficult to make any macro call and even more difficult to take advantage of it consistently without hurting myself. Buying cheap and selling at full value is difficult enough for me. Hat's off to people who can make reasonable macro call and also able to take advantage of their calls consistently.

Not yet! You can find the occasional thing that is getting beaten up now, but people are still really only worried about Greece. Once Greece exits, it opens the door to everyone else. In the long-run, the Euro will be better for it, because they would get rid of the reckless and lazy countries. But we aren't anywhere near that yet. The other thing you guys may have noticed, is that gold is finally getting killed when people are concerned about Europe, rather than them running to it. I think Prem's call on commodities peaking last year was correct. Sometime in the next year we are going to see a mini-version of 2008/2009, and then you should jump in with both feet! Just no substantial bullets left! Europe has to now work itself through the process of deleveraging, and that will be uncomfortable. Not as bad as 2008, but it will be uncomfortable for most investors. Cheers! I thought your 50% cash level was mainly due to averaging out as your positions went up and it's not based on market level or Europe issue.

With super Jumbo loan, unless you can fork out the cash to cover loan after 7 years , it's better to not take a chance. If you are planning to hold the house for only 4-5 years then it might work out well with ARM loan otherwise it's better to stick with cheap fixed rate. We can discuss about 3.75% or 4.25% but remember historically rates are in lowest range. If and when rate goes up, 3.75% or 4.25%, both will look pretty cheap.

How do you stay on top of the rate? I've never heard 30 yr fixed with that low rate (I'm in CA, so loan is bigger than 417K). I'm inclined to not do 7/1 if I didn't have the HELOC portion of the loan. You can get an idea of ongoing rates from different sites like Bankrate, zillow etc. You can also get actual quote from many lenders by using lendingtree but you will start getting calls so you you need to use it only when you are ready. You can get quote from some good brokers and then use them to keep you updated about the rates. Many ways to do it but take the quote at same time to compare. Don't simply go to big banks directly. They have horrible rates. Example: I went to wells and Bank of America and they quoted me much higher rates even though Wells Fargo ended up buying my loan from the other bank. Wells could have given me same rate and kept the whole margin but they did not give me that rate. I think they go for higher volume with less margin when they buy the loans in bulk. I don't know know your zip code but for your state with higher than 417K loan, best rates are below 4%. Not a real quote but a ball park. I have more than 417K in MD and my rate is 3.75%. You could have gotten bit lower but best rates were lasting for only few hours and difficult to get lock even though I was using very good broker. Best of luck with your refinancing.

If you can be on top of the rates fluctuations then you might be able to get 3.75% or below , 30 years fixed rate. Rate sheets of most banks gets adjusted twice a day so you need to find the information in real time to lock the rate. If you get 3.75 or lower then you need to see if getting 3% only for 7 years is worth the risk. Difference in rate will be less than 0.5% after you take account of tax deductions. I will stick with cheap 30 years. In my opinion even 4.25 % is not bad so you need to make sure that you don't spend too much in refinancing to make it worthwhile.