Liberty

Looks like a very good deal, but outside of my circle of competence for now, so I'm not touching it.

One word: Tilson.

That's exactly what I was going to write, but only because it's the only thing that came to mind, not because I know it's the most attractive of what he's looking at (it's the availability bias :) )

http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Visionary-Launchers-Employees.html I know many people here have been following him, so I thought you'd enjoy this one. It's a bit long, but well worth reading IMHO.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204517204577046590844614210.html

Thank you!

This is very important. WEll said.

I liked it a lot. Better than Black Swan. Taleb is quite the character, and has a huge ego. But he also has interesting things to say. If you can get over the fact that he puts A LOT of himself in the text, I highly recommend this book.

Hester, have you read Confidence Game? I had a feeling that you'd enjoy it quite a bit. Would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Here's a direct link:

[amazonsearch]Fooling Some of the People All of the Time[/amazonsearch] It's a well-known book, but I had not read it yet. After quite enjoying Confidence Game about Ackman's battle against MBIA, I figured this was the logical next step. I'm about 5 chapters in, and so far it's pretty good. I have a feeling it's just getting started, though. I haven't finished it yet, so I can't recommend it, but I thought this book deserved a thread here.

There's already a thread about this book: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/index.php?topic=5488.0

If someone followed you around, read a few biographies of you, watched videos of your speeches, saw you on TV, heard recordings, read the books that you have publicly said you have read, read speeches and books by your teachers and colleagues, etc.. They'd probably feel that you got repetitive after a while, especially if you were speaking mostly on just one topic :)

I'll miss reading about his outrageous antics in the Economist, but apart from that, good riddance!

The third edition is from 2010, if I recall correctly. Case studies so far are mostly from early 2000s (Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, etc).

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-one-chart-you-need-to-see-to-understand-mobile-2011-11 http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4eb7bd23ecad04184500000d-450-/us-phone-platform-install-base.png

[amazonsearch]Financial Shenanigans[/amazonsearch] I'm a few chapters in and I like it. I also got Quality of Earnings at the same time, but haven't started that one yet. It's certainly filing a hole in my knowledge about accounting. I like how a lot of the book seems to be based on real world examples. This is the kind of stuff that is best learn by case study, IMHO.

If someone can make this good, it's HBO. Hope it gets made.

No idea, but if it happens in the next few years, I'll be looking to move out of the apartment to buy :)

Never noticed anything wrong with either banking or trading.

Never had a problem with RBC and Chrome, though it is not my primary broker.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/jobs/canada-sees-biggest-monthly-job-loss-since-2009/article2225234/

Just reading the excerpt you quote, it sounds like a misleading use of statistics to make a political point. Under bush there was the dot com bubble burst and the beginning of the credit crisis, while the 1990s ended on a huge bull market.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-news/greek-pm-confirms-plans-scrapped-for-bailout-referendum/article2223663/

The problem with technology is that we get used to it so fast. By the time we have something amazing, it becomes normal and nobody realizes just how amazing it is. A lot of the stuff we take for granted now would seem totally sci-fi to people from not that long ago. I'm not sure how long Moore's Law will continue, but I think we're pretty far from physical limits when it comes to making computers faster. We might need to go in different directions from what we've been doing in the past couple decades, but there's still a roadmap for that stuff.