alwaysinvert

Yeah, no lol It may be worth considering more than five seconds. We are very, very bad at accurately representing history and our elders with nuance. In the case of Munger he has hints of many controversial views which you sometimes see outrage about (some cultures work better than others is an example which sets the "bigot alarms" blinking). A strange stance to take when you lap up every word he says in all other areas as if was the epitome of intellectualism. Suddenly his views are all down to age and senility, it couldn't possibly be because he read and reasoned his way to them just like in every other area. Only ideology can shut down an otherwise open mind so completely.

Also, consider the fact that the old men in this area too might know something about how the world works that you don't. Maybe it's we who are backwards. Try reading some evolutionary biology/psychology and come back to the "double standards" in a year or so.

Yup.

There is blatant hyperbole on both sides. The gist of the situation is that we have real, serious problems but one side paints it out to be basically like Somalia or some other failed state and the other denies it completely. My biggest problem with the whole thing is how overtly undemocratic in spirit this whole debacle has been. There never was a people's majority for anything remotely like the policies we have had. I will have to contradict this. GDP growth is not good in and of itself as population growth will make that happen all by itself. Population growth is is very, very bad when it is unplanned and uncontrolled, as evidenced by the substantial pressure on all our infrastructure and government services. We will not have an increase in GDP/capita because of this - quite the opposite. You can check how stagnant our GDP/capita has been for the last 10 years and except similar numbers or worse going forward, as the labor market value of the immigrants has not improved. Also, the way our labor market is structured it can't accomodate cheap labor and most likely won't for the foreseeable future. Some subsidies or tax cuts won't be nearly enough. The immigrants/refugees of the last few years are, for the most part, so incredibly far from being profitable to hire in Sweden that we are condemning them to a life of boredom and lack of purpose from the outset. We should probably consider money incentives for some of them to go back. Sure, but that would be due to policies similar to those of the US - which we have had for a long time and still have. That is, basically open doors to work here. In fact, we are more open to worker immigration than the US. But that is a completely different policy from the ones that have landed us in this mess.

You can find it here: https://www4.skatteverket.se/rattsligvagledning/edition/2017.1/331529.html#h-Villkorskraven

My mistake, the 10% threshold, or any size unlisted, is for tax free dividends and no capital gains if you are not an investment company (näringsbetingade andelar). Some "investment companies" are not actual investment companies in legal terms because they are more focused in 10%+ stakes and/or unlisted companies and thus are more tax efficient without the investment company classification. An example of that is Creades, if this has not changed recently.

By the way, in addition to number of owners (there have precedent setting supreme court rulings that 80 was not enough but 740 was, the real threshold is unknown) you need to have either 10% voting power of listed companies or stocks in unlisted companies to qualify, while also being diversified. An investment company also needs to have holding stocks as its primary function, as opposed to trading (free translation from Swedish legalese). Whatever that means in actuality.

Ratos Creades Bure Latour Svolder Melker Schörling Havsfrun Traction East Capital Explorer Vostok New Ventures Vostok Emerging Finance There were more of them a couple of years ago, but there has been a push towards greater scale in order to get down the expense ratio and thus push down discount to NAV (Öresund is an activist in Svolder for this very reason). Also, some companies have just wound up because their discount to NAV was so consistently high. For a company on that list that can't really bear its costs of being a listed company, look at Havsfrun, which to my knowledge is the last one left of the "mini" investment companies. Maybe they will start popping up again somewhere down the line. I would say the large opportunity in this space is largely over this time around. Almost none are at a large discount and some of them are even trading at sizable premiums at the moment. When you can copy most of their holdings much cheaper from a tax sheltered account and not give up flexibility, premiums are very hard to argue in favor of. In some cases however you are buying companies with big unlisted holdings. The last three on the list are Russia focused companies, which makes available investments an ordinary private investor can't make.

What a load of useless non-information his letter is. Same bullshit every year.

The thought that having field expertise makes you able to have an edge in that sector in the stock market - without insider knowledge - is maybe logical at a glance. In actuality there are few people who can combine that with objectivity (if they see the daily problems, how likely are they to be able to take a bird's eye view?), emotional stability and general knowledge of valuation. And anyhow, as a rule of thumb it is likely piss poor money management to allocate resources back into the sector you depend on for your salary.

Or install the add-on Block Referer (in Chrome, don't know if it exists for other browsers) and reroute these sites to always go via google.com. Some sites instead of the Google backdoor have a lock after a certain number of read articles. For them you could just try with another browser, because how they read your IP differs between browsers.

Don't like this at all. D@&n, are T&T not going to learn from others' mistakes? Whatever happened to vicarious learning (Munger)? http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/berkshire-hathaway/bruce-greenwald-buffett-has-lost-his-mind/

This is a great time to make some more forecasts, we all know how great those have been. And what could be easier to foresee than geopolitics. Just ask the former secretary of state.

I'll urge you all again to read Coming Apart by Charles Murray.

LOL at the predictableness of that final talking point.

I agree but let me be clear: the only situation actually worth knowing about is Nazi Germany and Hitler. You may not know this, but no other events in world history lend themselves to analogies.

I agree and Lampert is the new Buffett. No, Berkowitz is. No, Pabrai is. No, Fairfax is the new Berkshire and Prem is the new Buffett. No, Biglari is pretty clearly the new Buffett. And Dubya is the new Hitler. Wait no, Trump is the new Hitler. "History is a great teacher" -Adolf Hitler

Yes he was a megalomaniac but look what happened when they got rid of him, Gaddafi, and Assad (barely). Those creeps were a system of checks and balances in the region. When they disappeared chaos, ensued. Because the US is just like Libya and Syria. Of course not, don't be silly. It's exactly like Germany in 1933.

It's truly staggering to me that people can't see this, and this is not unique to the US. It is the exact same way here, and my guess is the same goes for every Western country. Most major publications are left-of-center including, and most egregiously so, public service broadcasters of both radio and tv. It's written in their statutes that they have to be objective but everybody except the journalists themselves knows they are left-leaning. The journalists vote +80% for the left but have somehow convinced themselves this doesn't show in either reporting, style or news selection. It's mind-blowing to me how this narrative can even sustain itself. The only explanation I have - which doesn't involve malicious intent - is that leftists are worse at understanding different worldviews than their own and so consequently don't know when they are being biased. Which some of Jonathan Haidt's work seems to confirm. http://www.aei.org/publication/liberals-or-conservatives-whos-really-close-minded/

Just remember, guys, you are not allowed to not accept the outcome of the vote before it has taken place. That is undemocratic as opposed to declaring the election results okay before the voting process is finished, which is clearly the democratic way. As of today it is undemocratic to withhold judgement on the democratic viability of an election until after it is over. One time a candidate took weeks after the election to accept the results, because it wasn't exactly clear what they were. But that election was totally rigged. The guy who won was selected, not elected. There is no way this one is rigged though, because the correct candidate looks set to win. We're lucky that way this time.

I think I agree on minimum income, if only on on pragmatic grounds. Anyhow, it's not inherently a left-wing idea, many libertarians have argued for it on the basis of efficiency and cost. Sadly, I think it is a very long way away from being implemented across the board because of the strong special interests in favor of keeping the current system of transfers in place. They are just about to start some experimenting with it in Finland, however.

The majority of people in the U.S. do not support: building a wall along the Mexican border, banning Muslim immigrants and refugees, and trade protectionism. You are misreading a vocal minority for a majority. I have never claimed there were a majority behind those issues. You are misreading what I have written.

That ideal is the exact opposite of the founding principles of the United States. The declaration of independence isn't about feeling like you belong to a tribal collective. It's about the INDIVIDUAL and his inalienable right to live his life as he sees fit, no matter what the tribe says. The right has lost all understanding of this. Trump and Sanders are two sides of the same coin. Sanders thinks your life exists to serve the worse off and Trump thinks your life exists to serve the nation. Who today says that your life belongs to you, and that this freedom to live it is inalienable- even if 99% of people disagree with your choices- even if it means not buying health insurance, or not saving for retirement- even if it means hiring a Mexican? Well, that depends on the emphasis you put on it. American national identity from my perspective entails being proud of individual liberty and embracing as American people willing to subscribe to that notion. That is a form of tribalism too - one which has made possible individualism. The US originally was the banding together of the free people as free people in an all new tribe. edit: I should also say that I agree with your point about Trump/Sanders, but I think you failed to grasp what I was saying. It was not a sanctioning of tribalism, it was an argument for widening it to the whole nation from its current state of dividing up the nation in different constituencies with colliding interests. Essentially, it is an acknowledgement of and accomodation to how humans behave throughout history.

If that is your rebuttal to my post, you failed to understand it. It was not about immigration. The point is not to argue the effectiveness of one policy versus another either, but rather that you can only go so far with promoting policies with which great swathes of the population disagree. At least if you are going to keep some kind of democratic legitimacy. Arguing for the "correct" policies is all fine, but implementing them against the people's will is neither smart nor democratic in spirit. Milton Friedman, despite being a staunch libertarian who wanted to repeal just about everything, understood this perfectly well half a century ago. I'm flummoxed by how educated people don't do it now.

What primitive thinking. Yea, blame the politicians. Blame the government. Blame the bankers. Blame the Chinese, the Mexicans and of course the Muslims. Blame everyone but yourself for not studying or working hard or smart enough. So much for non-accountability... What a joke. Let them eat cake!