Mephistopheles

For us investors, from an economic standpoint, I believe Clinton would be better than Trump. Tariffs on imports can't possibly be a good thing.

1. How do others suffer when they shouldn't have had the job in the first place? They benefited by getting paid to do work that didn't create value, how is that suffering? Better then never having the job at all. 2. In case you didn't know, Berkshire used to be a textile mill...which Buffett closed...and people lost their jobs. People also lost jobs when Dexter shoes was shut down. Also, Buffett partnered with 3G to take over Heinz Kraft who have laid of many people. Berkshire also laid off people in it's housing businesses during the financial crisis. To suggest Buffett is against firing people is laughable. The fact that Buffett doesn't close the few underperforming businesses that it owns has a lot to do with reputation in order to get other businesses to more willfully sell out to them. It has nothing to do with not wanting to fire people and everything to do with creating the best long term value for Berkshire shareholders. I.e. keeping a small underperforming business like Buffalo News is a small price to pay to preserve a reputation of a friendly owner. I'm sure they've laid of people over the years though. Having said that, Buffett has very much stated that were a company start to lose money permanently, they'd shut it down (textiles). The fact of the matter is that most of Berkshire's businesses are excellent, so Buffett rarely needs to lay off people if ever. This is all Economics 101 or Berkshire 101. I get the feeling you're trolling. P.s. If you want to talk about Buffett's opinion, I suggest you read the transcript from the last meeting. Him and Munger were in agreement over this. Perhaps you need to reconsider your stake in Berkshire...

You guys have really weird definitions of win-win situations. I hope I never have to do a deal with youse. ;) :P And, no, I disagree. If you hired 1000 employees, you should have looked into the future and planned for it. So the fact that you suddenly don't need 900, speaks poorly of you. Even though you conveniently exercise your power and fire them. Yes, the fact that you overhired by 10x speaks poorly of your business decision, as it is obviously a mistake. And so the right move would be to correct your mistake rather than continue with it. Much like a worker may take a job that he/she doesn't want, and has every right to quit. Great leadership and management is about recognizing the company's limitations, and that transformation or growth at all costs may not work. If you think that's wrong, I have some SHLD shares that I want to sell you. Freeing up resources is a good thing. I'm surprised someone on a value investment message board favors employing people when it's uneconomical. A great Charlie Munger quote from the last Berkshire meeting (I'm paraphrasing): "If companies didn't hire and fire people, we'd all still be on the farm."

LOL sorry guys! It's been a crazy few days of work and no sleep. I was referring to the "Political Alpha" piece from a few days ago, which somehow I thought was "Politico", which is a news site. I did a bunch of Google searches of "Politico Fannie Mae" and couldn't find a thing in regards to that report so I concluded it was a hoax. Having said that, I agree with some others who say we should take it with a grain of salt. Hell, even the timhoward site is saying this is a "parody". That's when you know that perhaps you are too bullish on FNMA, when even that site is bearish on your thesis.

So looks like that politico piece was fake huh? Haven't heard a peep today..

For some reason it doesn't load for me :/

That's true, but evidently he thought that the low price was here to stay, no? If it was simply because the stock didn't follow the price drop, then should he not be getting back into the sector big time now?

In a recent interview, Warren Buffett said that he sold Berkshire's stake in Exxon last year because he became "less enthusiastic about the price of crude oil" and that "the future wasn't going to be as good as people were saying it was going to be". This is interesting to me because everyone (including Warren) says that he doesn't spend even 10 minutes a year thinking of macro factors, but obviously in this case he did. I'm very curious to know how exactly he foresaw bad times ahead for oil. Anyone have any thoughts? Perhaps it can be a great learning example for all of us. Another thing that's interesting is that within a quarter or two of the XOM sale, Todd/Ted were out of NOV, though by this time the oil collapse was well under way. I remember around that time Buffett said that XOM was sold because "they had better uses for the money" (as if they really were dependent on that $3.7 billion). I wonder if he gave a more diplomatic answer at that time because they were still in the process of unloading NOV. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-08/buffett-says-he-sold-exxon-bought-refiner-phillips-on-oil-fears

Oops, nevermind, time to go long IBM! :)

Eddie Lampert also has a large position; but that's a negative since he only invests in companies that are going in the wrong direction.

Seems like Yale now is also a big believer in deflation and ultra low rates going forward!

That sums up the $400B argument. Just saying that I think there are many great reasons to be bullish: violation of 5th amendment, illegal under Delaware law, the dangerous precedent set, the risk of public release of documents. But the lack of capital is not a real problem when you're backed by unlimited funding when needed. Makes for great talking points though.

I'm a big fan of Ackman and McLean, and have high hopes for these cases against the Govt. But, I don't think the argument that F&F have no capital is a great one. They have unlimited capital in the form of full backing of the U.S. Government borrowing capabilities and printing press. It's not like they'd be left for dead in the event of a crisis, assuming this status quo remains.

Hi Scott, I know you own AMZN, FB, MKL and some others. Just wondering what you do to keep up with these, since it seems like you don't dedicate a lot of time to reading.

And I'm sure they wouldn't mind a headline to the effect of "taxpayers earn $200 billion profit on Fannie/Freddie bailout"

I know I'm a bit late, but thanks for all your replies. It seems that it's the value on the day of that matters.

I suppose this means that Combs must be thinking about 1,000 pages worth of information every day.

Don't forget the brilliant question that required out of the box thinking: "Doesn't the fact that you came up with the BAC deal in the bathtub mean that you aren't as informed on your investments as you used to be?" .... (Answer: "I've read the 10-k of BAC for the last 50 years")

I suggest learning Braille so you can read a book with each hand while reading/listening with your eyes and ears.

I know, I was just kidding. There are a few long threads on this topic over the last year or two. Apparently someone talked to Combs in person and he said the 500/day # is misquoted and he actually does 100/day. That would explain the interview in which he also said 100.

Buffett told the class to read 500/day and Combs upped it to 1,000? In that case, probably the best way to get ahead is to one up Combs and read 2,000 pages a day. Anyone who can't do that should only be buying low cost index funds.

I'll be buying the book on Tuesday at the Ackman event; will follow up with you guys with what is said there.

Thanks for posting, I'll definitely be going. Would love to shake hands with Ackman though I'm not sure what the likelihood of that is

He said he noticed the pay plan before Winters brought it up. I get his logic behind abstaining. He knows he's influential enough that he doesn't need to vote no in order for the plan not to work. Instead he took the diplomatic approach which also preserved Berkshire's relationship with Coke. It was brilliant imo. As far as Howard Buffett. I agree it was a weak explanation by Warren, blaming how boards work. Howard should have been more active on the issue and Warren shouldn't have made a silly excuse. Overall Warren threw his weight around and it worked, so I'm glad.

I do have a basis - at the state level the contributions were not deductible