Sea Island

Also: debt to portfolio size matters as well, especially in a deflationary environment, no?

ericd1, being difficult to find should make you all that more anxious to locate one. If the best ones fell at our feet, they would not be worth much.

Interesting point HarryLong, especially with what has gone on for the last few years. Which portion of the retail world would you touch?

In the US you can put anything you want in the trust as a condition. You have to a willing and able trustee to enforce it as well. However, practically speaking according to the courts, you can't leave your estate to your pets. See Leona Helmsley.

1. Educate them yourself, show them where the inheritance came from and how long it took to amass 2. Interview lots of CFPs, CFAs, ChFCs types in the "retail" financial services industry 3. Find the firm or individual that you would want to work with 4. Introduce your heirs to the professional that you have chosen 5. Set up your heirs with some money now and help them integrate with the advisor 6. Structure your estate plan with incentives/hurtles to limit waste and sloth 7. Sleep well at night

The Kyle Bass video could be summed up: don't spend more than you make. How much will GDP have to grow to meet current and future obligations and why rmitz would you assume that entitlement costs will be lower than estimated?

KFRCanuk, and thats just what is known.

rmitz, why will GDP be higher?

T-Bone, I believe the jury is still out on the safety of frac drilling. In addition, as we have seen, any type of drilling is only as safe as the operator and it only takes one willing to push the envelope a little to ruin the industry. I would rather see more LNG facilities built and experiment with fracing in Poland/Germany etc., let them deal with contaminated ground water.

Parsad, Have companies really deleveraged or is it pretend and extend? From Zero hedge: It is not surprising that nearly 50% of cash was generated from operating cash flow ($1 trillion) while $600 billion came from new debt issuance (the rest from asset disposition). Yet despite consistent claims that companies have massive deleveraged, just $635 billion of debt was repaid, meaning only $35 billion of debt was actually retired! http://www.zerohedge.com/article/sp-500-full-year-sources-and-uses-cash

It sounded like Prem was calling in from the Fairfax corporate retreat on the moon. Did he say these swaps had a notional value of $22.5 billion?

Taleb's strategy may not work as well in a product environment such as a hedge fund which has to serve many masters. If your yield on your treasuries is 3% and the volatility is not working in your favor and you have a standard hedge fund fee arrangement it won't be a wonderfully long experiment. However for a personal strategy I believe it has exceptional merit, if you have a large enough pot, small income demands and/or long time horizon. If you had a $20 MM portfolio with 90% earning 3% in treasuries and you could live on half of that income(after tax) and reinvest the balance along with the remaining $2 MM in out of the money leaps, you could do quite nicely. Its not a very good model for most as not many investors would accept a 1.5% yield with 100% safety(define safety?) and the chance for extremely lumpy but extremely positive returns. The beauty is of course that you need relatively small investments paying off relatively infrequently to make it all work quite nicely. Buy some gold and guns out of the 1.5% and maybe a naturally fortified mountain lair for additional safety

I believe that one of the most interesting aspects of modern portfolio theory and asset allocation, is that when combined with investor physcology it will not create wealth. It might maintain wealth or preserve vs. an index, not on an absolute basis, but it will not create wealth over the long term. As asset allocation is applied in the retail financial industry, it is designed to limit blow ups on an absolute basis(its ok if a "well allocated" portfolio declines 40% with the market). Taleb's strategy is a highly concentrated one that you would never be allowed to implement at a retail financial service firm for a private client or institutional client. Nor would any "responsible" investor choose to place 100% of their financial assets with a hedge fund manager that was pursuing a strategy like this. I don't think compliance departments like it when you begin an investment with the likelihood of a 100% as is the case with leaps etc. However the Taleb strategy is beautiful and would create far more wealth than a "traditional" asset allocation strategy.

Illegal aliens?

The U.S. has more uninsured illegal aliens than Australia has citizens

The leading Canadian newspaper, the Globe and Mail, reports that "critics say that the clinics are taking physicians away from the public system making it even harder…to find a family doctor." David Eggen, executive director of a group that supports the Canadian socialized system, Friends of Medicare, said that it's already hard to find a family physician in Canada and that clinics like these, springing up in several Canadian cities, could make it even harder. It does not seem to have occurred to defenders of socialized medicine that the system itself is causing the doctor shortage. Cuts in medical fees, overcrowding of facilities, shortages of equipment and space, and bureaucratic oversight have all combined to drive men and women out of family medical practice. Now, with a critical shortage looming, those who can afford to pay for adequate care are opting out of the public system and, literally, taking their lives into their own hands. But it is illegal to make patients "have to pay a fee to gain access to health services" that are provided free by the government system. So patients and doctors are forming membership-only groups to avoid the legal penalties that could potential stop them from getting or giving the care that they need.

also medicare and social security in the U.S.

the whole system is economically bankrupt from the beginning: please see every other nation with socialized medicine as en example. It is also intellectually bankrupt as you cannot redistribute endlessly: see EU and Greece

Well put, and remember the GM bond holders.

I understand Myth's point to be about the idea of a human perosn vs. their voting rights. Either way, BP just took it in the throat from the U.S. govt. Based on prior posts regarding the role of governement in the market, do you all view this as a bullish sign that BP just put a $20 billion down payment on what will be an endless stream of claims?

Oh, my bad. I think it would be risky to buy BP at the current price. I don't think it has been totally thrown onto the value ash heap as of yet.

No doubt then you are familiar with the historical irony that it was actually the abolitionists/anit-slavery crowd that didn't want slaves to count at all while slave owners thought they should have full representation.

"The tax dollars need to be collected anyway (look at our deficit)". You can reduce spending. Obama administration spends $1.2 billion on cycling and walking initiatives The Obama administration more than doubled spending on cycling and walking initiatives to $1.2 billion (£810 million) last year as it seeks to coax Americans out of their cars. "There is nothing efficient about sending our dollars to Saudi Arabia" There is something effecient in using theirs before ours, certainly it would be more effecient to have this current oil spill in the Persian Gulf than the GOM. Sea Island - I think you been reading too much Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul. You seem to have a deep hatred / distrust for government. I haven't read the work of these two, I familiar with the U.S. Constitution.

Sure government can also give you have empty bullet trains, retirement at 55, and the WORST oil disaster ever, which was caused by the government of Iraq. Followed by the second worst from the gov. controlled PEMEX, in the GOM. Concurrent with this this stream as it relates to BP, what about BPT? Any chance that they have been cutting corners on the North Slope? Doesn't seem as if any of this has been priced into those shares.

Government has cause far more devastation by trying to do "good" than any individual or collection of individuals has done trying to make a buck.