Ben Bernanke and “The Costanza Effect”
“This is found money. I want to parlay it. I wanna make a big score!”—George Costanza, of Seinfeld, on interest income We were having a back-and-forth via Twitter this morning with a friend of this blog, a very smart report...
UBS, Connecticut, and The Reverse Protection Syndicate Racket
I went back to OhioBut my pretty countrysideHad been paved down the middleBy a government that had no pride…I said, A, O, way to go Ohio—Chrissie Hynde, The Pretenders Well UBS is in the news again, this time for a “rogue trader” who spent...
9/11
It doesn’t matter, but here’s my story. I was swimming laps in the pool in the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, and thinking tech stocks, when the first plane hit. I didn’t know what had happened until I came out of the men’s loc...
Major Major Major Major: A Book Love Story
The laziest column being written in the Mainstream Press these days has to be the “Even Though I Own a Kindle/iPad/Nook I Still Like Print Books Better” lament. Generally written by an aging Baby Boomer, the columns always start with a n...
Buffett, Berkshire, BYD and The Greater Fool Theory in Practice
BYD, the Chinese automaker whose name stands for “Build Your Dreams,” couldn't be more aptly named. A Chinese rags to riches story, its shares were given the good housekeeping seal of approval several years ago when Warren Buffett bought...
Buffett Takes Off the Gloves? He’s Getting Worried.
Stop Coddling the Super-RichOur leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.While the poor...
Standard & Poor’s: Welcome to Our World!
SEC Examines S&P’s MathItalian Town’s Prosecutors Probe S&P, Moody’sWhite House Challenges S&P Decision—The Wall Street Journal “The fact is, we didn’t need a rating agency to tell us that we need a balanced, ...
The Most Important Call of the Year: “I’ve Got All The Clarity I Need”
We have, in the past, highlighted in these virtual pages the comments of David Farr, the outspoken and common-sense-laden CEO of Emerson Electric Co. Readers not familiar with Emerson should become familiar with it, for in its long history...
The Least Reassuring Headline You Will Read Today
The least reassuring headline you will read today—and it may not get much attention with all the budget talk going on—is from our friends at Reuters: White House Not Worried About Double Dip - White House economic adviser Gene Sperli...
Memo to Jeff Immelt: When is an Apple Store NOT an Apple Store? When It’s in China…
We kick off the return to non-Berkshire Hathaway topics here at NotMakingThisUp in the simplest way possible: by referring readers to a different blog. That different blog, which was brought to our attention by John Hempton, the ace propriet...
Munger’s Revenge, Concluded: The Tiger Woods Syndrome, and What Made Berkshire Hathaway as We Know It
Well, Tiger Woods Syndrome is breaking out all over, even in Omaha, Nebraska. By “Tiger Woods Syndrome” we refer to what happens when the Mainstream Media has been sitting on a story it has long known of but couldn’t go with because th...
Munger’s Revenge, Part VI: What Bothers People
“What I think bothers people is that there wasn’t some big sense of outrage or something in the [press] release, and, you know, I plead guilty to that.”—Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, April 30, 2011. “The facts w...
