txlaw

He states that the "normal" growth rate for the economy is 6%. This kind of fairy dust can wave off a lot of bad news. I suppose it's very easy for him to find value given that macro model. Wouldn't you be concerned if your money manager said something like that? I don't recall whether he said that the US economy normally grows at a 6% rate. If he did, that's crazy. If he said that 6% from a "bottom" is normal growth rate, that's more reasonable. But, regardless, I don't think it makes sense to rely on past US growth rates to predict future US growth rates. His quantitative and chartist stuff seems not so rigorous to me. His qualitative points were good ones. But I wonder how much of his comments are directed towards making his AUM (TEXPers is a large client, I presume) comfortable with his being aware of macro matters.

Yeah, there is also a lot of chart voodoo in there where he is focused on the price of the market overall, in addition to the unexplained things like the 6X return on cash in deflationary times and the manufacturing renaissance (he doesn't attempt to explain why manufacturing might be coming back to the US). I did like the last video where he notes the tailwinds of the nat gas production explosion, the emergence of the housing market, and American ingenuity (little cheesy, I know) -- squares with WEB's views in many respects. He does gloss over the public sector debt/unfunded liabilities problem, though. Does anyone know whether Vanderberg has always focused on the macro or whether this is a more recent phenomenon to deal with his client base (e.g., TEXPers)?

Some pretty interesting comments regarding the economic future of the US.

Interesting to hear that from Boone Pickens. On the other hand, the CEO of Devon Energy thinks that nat gas could go to a $1 handle.

You can also get some pretty interesting color from CCs on how banks treat reserves when it comes to lending against them.

You should read the 10-Ks of these nat gas companies and the reserve reports that they attach as exhibits. See, e.g., the reports attached for CHK as Ex-99.1 through Ex-99.4.

My understanding of Robert Lustig's research -- based only on an article I read in the NYT -- is that fructose consumed in high quantities and concentration is the danger he warns about, rather than the consumption of starches that break down primarily into glucose. Apparently, fructose is metabolized only in the liver and causes insulin resistance, or something like that. This is the article that I read a while back: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=all Who knows, though? It will be interesting to see how the research unfolds.

Bernanke lectures: Stream Videos And here are links to Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher's interviews on CNBC: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000081820 http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000081818 Fisher is a very reasonable guy, and I really like to hear his reasoned critiques of the Fed's actions. I actually agree with him that there should be no more QE.

I'm sure you fellows saw this story on the possibility of sugar toxicity: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7403942n

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. Anyone else have any recs? Is it necessary to rent a car, or will it be easy to get around by cabbing it? I would actually love to come to the Yellow BRK'ers meet and greet, but my flight probably wouldn't come in in time for that event. I'm about 70% sure I'm coming to Omaha.

Austin, TX

I might be going to the BRK annual meeting this year. It would be my first time there. Other than the actual meeting, Q&A, and Sunday gala, what other stuff do people usually do while in Omaha?

One of the part owners of the new JV in China is Fung Investments. I found some pretty good videos of/with the Brothers Fung. http://www.bloomberg.com/video/88839624/ Can any board members point to more good info on the Li & Fung story?

What? Blasphemy!!!

As someone who troubleshoots website and software issues for a living, I agree with this. Flash is awful. It served it's purpose for a while, but there are now better alternatives. HTML5 would be further along if Microsoft was capable of developing a decent browser. IE's support for HTML5/CSS3 is still far behind every other browser. Unfortunately, so many people are stuck using IE at work and are not given other options. And ESPN & sports is really the only reason I still have cable. If I could get ESPN, TNT, TBS & the NFL Network online, I would cut cable immediately. I'm thinking about picking up an Apple TV too though. I'd love to be able to use it with the MLB package. I hate Flash, but there are definitely times when I want to watch a video that simply won't run on an iPad. Charlie Rose's website, for example, doesn't work on an iPad, although I think you can watch some of his stuff using the BloombergTV app. Sports would be the only reason for me to have cable. That I miss -- just being able to turn on the TV and find a game.

Haha, yes, I read about that. Pretty risque on their part.

Airplay was very nice, I must admit, although the inability to play flash videos on the iPad makes it not as useful as I would have liked after actually using the device for the weekend. The Boxee box is intriguing to me because you can also use it to watch broadcast TV in addition to Netflix, HuluPlus, HBOGo, etc. And Boxee apparently supports Airplay, so you can stream music and video to your TV from your MacBook. There's also a watch later function so that if you find a video when you are somewhere else -- say at work -- you queue it up to watch later and then can watch it when you get home. The Roku box is also supposed to be very nice. I am a cord cutter, so I'm trying to figure out the best setup. AppleTV is not it for now. Maybe the iTV will be better. I just use a Mac mini as my htpc, and it works pretty great. I thought about that, but I really don't need an htpc. Didn't want to shell out the bucks for a Mac Mini, which is the only HTPC I would get.

Airplay was very nice, I must admit, although the inability to play flash videos on the iPad makes it not as useful as I would have liked after actually using the device for the weekend. The Boxee box is intriguing to me because you can also use it to watch broadcast TV in addition to Netflix, HuluPlus, HBOGo, etc. And Boxee apparently supports Airplay, so you can stream music and video to your TV from your MacBook. There's also a watch later function so that if you find a video when you are somewhere else -- say at work -- you queue it up to watch later and then can watch it when you get home. The Roku box is also supposed to be very nice. I am a cord cutter, so I'm trying to figure out the best setup. AppleTV is not it for now. Maybe the iTV will be better.

Out of curiosity, what didn't it do that you expected it to? The interface sucked, actually. I was expecting it to be more like a coverflow UI. And the home screen on the device is not very appealing. The remote that comes with the device is also terrible. It's not ergonomic and it just isn't very nice to interact with after using something as nice as the iPad. Actually, the remote interacted with my Macbook(!) straight out of the box, which I thought was strange. Meaning that when I used the remote to navigate to a particular app on the AppleTV, iTunes on my laptop would start to play or the volume on my laptop would change! I installed the Remote app, too, and I didn't particularly like that either. I also couldn't get Netflix to work properly, and I didn't feel like messing around with it anymore, so I went straight to the Apple store and returned the thing. Returning it was surprisingly painless. I ordered a Boxee box from Amazon as a replacement. We'll see how that turns out.

I'm really enjoying my new iPad. I returned my AppleTV, though. I was quite disappointed with it.

Yeah, could be. Although I don't find Pandit particularly charismatic.

Benmosche is showing capital allocation and negotiation skills that Moynihan still has to show. Both are great. Well, Moynihan will have his chance. For now, I'm happy for him to build up to a fortress balance sheet. I just wish he were a bit more charismatic -- more Dimon-like. But that's a very small criticism.

Very interesting article. Thanks.

Both are great. I have a soft spot for Mr. Benmosche, though. The guy is just what I expect the consummate CEO to act like.

Take a look at the CCAR results. The minimum stressed capital ratio for BAC assuming no capital actions after Q1 2012 is lower than WFC, C, and JPM. When you consider the minimum stressed capital ratio with all proposed capital actions, BAC's ratio is still lower than WFC's, even after WFC's proposed dividend increase and stock buy back. I would rather BAC conserve capital so that they have a minimum stressed capital capital ratio comparable to WFC, particularly because of the legal overhang uncertainty. We're not yet at a fortress balance sheet, but we're getting there.