Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
No. of Recommendations: 51
Well, dang!! It looks like we have lost RationalWalk.
Whether you agree or disagree with his views, I think all could agree that he positively contributed to this board, always clearly articulating his views along with his supporting reasoning, and without disparaging his fellow posters.
I, for one, appreciate his contributions and hate to see him leave. Hopefully, he will reconsider.
Philmordun
No. of Recommendations: 1
For my money, RationalWalk, Ppant, and of course Jim are tops when it comes to Berkshire.
The rest of you are great too, of course! :)
Bought some today under 300, a steal here!
No. of Recommendations: 5
I hope that the community here can police itself to minimize perpetual inane arguments, personal attacks, and petty feuds. So far, it has been pretty good.
But there is plenty of room for disagreement, rational or otherwise. Speaking for myself, I will usually be ignorant, occasionally wrongheaded, and sometimes even (when my lunch disagrees with me) offensive.
Apologies in advance. Just chasten me privately, and if I keep it up, toss me out on my ear. But nobody should ever feel obliged to leave because I have been a jerk to them!
No. of Recommendations: 30
Apologies in advance. Just chasten me privately, and if I keep it up, toss me out on my ear. But nobody should ever feel obliged to leave because I have been a jerk to them!
I most certainly was not 'a jerk' to anybody. I responded to the comment that the system 'was working as it should.' That is nonsense, even with the extra machinations RW noted the FDIC was pursuing, and the reason is simple: TRUST. It doesn't take much to start a bank panic (as we saw a couple days ago) and as we saw dozens of times in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Panics now move with lightning speed thanks to electronic communications and the tentacles of today's wider financial system and the easy touch of the keyboard.
In spite of the extensive media coverage over the weekend (headlines on every newscast, top of the page in the financial press, and elsewhere) I suggest a fraction of a fraction of 1% would know of the behind the scenes machinations, and even if they did would still have been poised with their finger on the 'move money' trigger at 9:00 Monday morning. That is a panic and once started panics are desperately hard to contain. People get trampled heading for the exits at the mention of fire, even if there's no fire. It's PANIC!
I will go further. The idea that VC's would be able to 'bail out' these companies is fantasy. We are talking $200 billion in 'unavailable funds' (the notional assets of SVB), for who knows how long? Weeks? Months? 2024? Mark Cuban was going to take payroll from his wallet? Great. Where was the other $199,000,000,000 going to come from to pay suppliers, landlords, utilities, employees of hundreds of companies? (There was another $100,000,000,000 or two at at Signature Bank, which went upside down Friday night thanks to ' wait for it ' panic.)
OK, not solely panic, some of it was stupidity surely. Again, how would most depositors know, except by wading in the weeds in a field of accounting and annual reports they know little about? No, I don't care that some VC companies would have died. I care that the spreading financial epidemic would have killed or maimed many unrelated mainline companies and employees.
Now, lest someone accuse me of wanting to bail everyone out always I will repeat: this is terrible. It increases moral hazard immeasurably. Sloppy CFOs and risk officers should be fired. The crypto bro libertarians-turned-socialists at the drop of a bank should be tarred and feathered and perhaps flogged in the public square. That said, innocent bystanders and even not-so-innocent bystanders should be chastised and I would hope chastened, and certainly the general public should not suffer for the actions of a few greedy souls reaching for yield at a bank they never heard of. We saw similar happen in 2008, didn't we? And we saw the decades-long results in the 1930's without quick intervention didn't we? Have we learned nothing? Cripes, JP Morgan knew it in the panic of 1908, a century ago.
Finally, I'll conclude by saying I think this is a message board. I expect people to disagree with me, sometimes strongly. I certainly do not think my post was rude in any way, and while I am sorry to have somehow inexplicably offended someone, I am really not sorry for speaking my mind. I thought that's what a message board such as this was for. Correct me if I'm wrong.
No. of Recommendations: 23
Seriously, if Rationalwalk is that delicate, he is better off not posting here. I had to reread these messages to even try to guess what was leading to discussions of yet another magnificent GBF.
I think Jim has suffered many more slings and arrows than any one week on these shiny new boards have produced, and fortunately for us all, he powers through with politeness, clarity, and usually much better natured and informative responses than I can manage even when I think I'm being complimented. Jim is my touchstone, when Jim sneezes, the world has bubonic plague, but until that day everything is great.
I'm hoping RW is not that delicate, and is just posting when he feels like it and not posting when he feels like it, just like all the rest of us should be doing. But if he is indeed gone, perhaps the more controlled environment of his own site just suits him better, and those of us who want a fix of RW will just have to go get it there. C'est la vie, as they might say in Jim's neighborhood.
R:
No. of Recommendations: 58
RW: I regret having started posting here and will not make that mistake again. Honest debate is fine. Distortion and straw man arguments are not. Life is too short. I have no incentive to get into that kind of crap, not here, not on twitter, and not anywhere.
Above is needlessly harsh. This is not Twitter or TMF or 'anywhere' created and maintained by a big team of people in a big company. The fact that this message board even exists is nothing short of a miracle. It was created single-handedly by Manlobbi, at great effort and personal expense, purely out of altruism, to give us a chance to continue to interact after TMF moved to the new boards which most people did not like.
Life is too short
Yes, especially for a world renowned composer and musician like Manlobbi who truly has other extremely important things to work on. And yet, he has already put 500+ hours of development effort and continues to spend time on an ongoing basis keeping it operational. He is also selflessly paying for the hosting all by himself. Manlobbi has given us a free wonderful gift and we should all be grateful.
Honest debate is fine.
Debate implies two sides firmly dug in trying to convince the other side they are right. It's not a great reason to post.
I have no incentive to get into that kind of crap
The real incentive to post is that we are not infallible. We need to stress test our ideas. We post to generate discussion and get multiple perspectives. We may disagree or even dislike some of the feedback, but on balance the feedback is very beneficial.
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so" - Mark Twain.
Above is especially true in investing. Keeping an open mind and an eternal search for truth is the only safeguard.
Since reality itself is constantly changing, the only way to keep up is to continually interact with intelligent and well informed people such as participants on this board. This is why we must all strive to preserve the community, keep posting and help each other out in our eternal search for truth in the financial world.
No. of Recommendations: 14
I hope Manlobbi doesn't mind the plug, but I saw his post with an aside on how to support Shrewd'm in another thread:
https://www.shrewdm.com/MB?pid=748254043Spoken in a positive spirit, as always.
I hadn't noticed the support the site link until I ran across that post, so others around here may not have either.
Full disclosure: I'm currently a freeloader, albeit a very grateful one.
