Berkshire Hathaway | Forum profile

I believe that your calculation of share dilution for BRK shareholders arising from BNI purchase (paying 40% of proceeds in BRK stock) is wrong. You have incorrectly assumed that there are approximately 340M shares in BNI. You need to subtract the 77M shares BRK already owns to calculate dilution for BRK shareholders since they already own the 77M BNI shares w/o issuing new BRK stock. See, that's why I post stuff like this. I once got...

Money could also be used even in the absence of government. Can money be used without rules and regulation? As that is what I said, don't twist my words before calling them false please. What's your definition of government anyway. And what you mean by 'free'. If 'free' means 'free of government' then your definition of 'free' is rather narrower than that of most people I know. Mark Of course...

ConstantGain, Thank you for this link... it is very useful. jan :^)

19.6 months -- kind of puts everything in perspective actually, it doesn't your statement implies that it really doesn't matter where the money got invested.... in the worst case if it went to zero, they'll just earn it back within 2 years anyway. there is the concept of relative utility to consider. would TIPS bonds have been a better place to park the money and get an inflation hedge? if a railroad must have been acquired,...

I'm certainly not obtuse, although I can be very dismissive. There are certain people that I will be able to convince and certain people that I will never be able to convince. On the one hand, you talk in this post of your own evolution of beliefs. On the other, you say the above. Perhaps you are engaged in these discussions just in case your own thoughtful evolution is not over yet? And your thinking is not yet perfect? And it is not...

As of Sep 30, 2009, BRK's PG holding has a cost basis of 5,484 m and a net unrealized loss of $159 m. This is surprising considering the bulk of PG holding, is for the Gillette shares. In 1989, Buffett paid $600m for Gillette cumulative preferred shares which converted to 93.6 m PG shares, In Jan 2005, Buffett bought another 6.4 m shares in PG to boost BRK holding to 100m shares. PG was then trading around $52-$55, so thecost basis of...

<<I am unable to convince people who don't believe that rationality requires starting with what we know about reality.>> This is what puzzles me the most about you. You seem to always start with a theory/assumption, not reality, and then claim it's fact. Such as "government intervention caused the crisis". History can't be rolled back and started over again to find out which factor...

oh wow....this thread is only at 41 posts.....we can use up a lot more bandwidth...... carry on, Dave

Because I don't believe the US is likely to benefit greatly from a global recovery. I don't share your pessimistic view of the USA, but that was not your original argument. You said BNI couldn't grow faster than GDP + inflation. I presume you meant US GDP and US inflation. (Correct me if you meant world GDP and world inflation.) If so, then arguing about how bad US GDP growth may be has nothing to do with it. You and I probably...

Really great discussion on BNI, thanks. It's funny how very smart people can come up with very different conclusions. This guy obviously likes BNI and is pretty knowledgeable about it, yet a couple days ago someone on here posted a link to another board on the fool where someone posted why BNI was a mediocre railroad and that Buffett didn't even choose the best of breed in capital intensive industry. It sounded like he had followed...