ConservativeTom

NYT: What's with Berkshire's Moody's Stake?

I think the conflict is apparent, but what is the incentive to continue to hold the investment?
Are ratings agencies going to disappear, or, will they need to upgrade their form of service and its quality?
At what point would the conflict be something which would require regulatory intervention, causing BRK to jettison its Moody's holding?
At what cost/price?

On Buffett-Back Riding

BRK.B is kicking around somewhere near $3M right now, and had peaked at $5M just when Buffett warned "we're not going to see those profits again for a long while." Since he likely views BRK as eternal, he's still not worried about timing.
If you are not, and you admire the method of investing you see in Buffett and company (keep in mind, his staff is small, but he and Charlie none the less have a staff), why not buy the B shares at this price, and forget about mirroring what he does, just buy what he has done?
Makes sense to me.


On Jan 28 04:32 AM User 305589 wrote:

> btw: I'll likely never understand why people want to piggyback Buffet's
> stocks when they could easily do so first hand by buying Berkshire's
> stock -especially at times like now, when it trades at a substantial
> discount (30-40%) to intrinsic value.

Sallie Mae “Off Point Excuses”

Hmm. That sounds terrible in a prospective sense.
Now, looking back ... how many of these student loans have been granted to students who will never graduate and fail to make payments, or, having graduated, will not have the earnings power to pay back these loans?
Is this bad debt number buried, only to come out in the student loan liquidity crisis, after we get through with our mortgage debacle?
Hmm.