An investment in Treasury bills, absolutely liquid and short-term, on 01/01/2000 would have been ahead of stocks one year ago. Now it is slightly lagging behind (http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/histretSP.html).

I think we are indeed in a secular bear market that is about to end according to the 16-20 years trough-to-peak, then peak-to-trough cycle: 1949-1967-1982-2000-2016?. That is, unless stocks have reached a permanently high plateau (and 15 years is already exceedingly permanent, save for a few months between 2008 and 2009).

We can swing way past the highs of 2000 on any index.
   The FED can ensure that and every statistic reads positive however they cannot account for a declining dollar index at the same time so if you combine dollar value & nasdaq nominal value it is quite unlikely we will surpass 2000 for many years.  
 I believe DXY has so far fallen from 120 to 80 and it seems intentional that dollars will continue to fall in value to underline the export capability of USA (while restricting certain exports like oil to favour nationals over foreign users of dollars)

You would have to listen very carefully and he would never say outright but I believe WB agrees with his dad in principal however for the sake of popularity and convenience he plays along with the current administration.  It certainly would be alot more trouble near term to realise the mistakes made over the last 40 years based on this endless government spending, even a simple default would turn the world upside down.  I doubt when Im 83 I will want the world to upset so much, cant blame WB but I think he knows the above full well.  He does say bonds or cash are awful afaik

Savings placed in a bank are not cash, they are an investment at that point.    In normal circumstance, you are relying on that bank as a company to return a positive on their business and to maintain a solid model that allows them to give your cash back.   Really this is investment risk and return.
   In modern times we of course think its impossible to lose and the money is guaranteed to come back to us so it is savings not investment but really its closer to the second and government interference in which banks fail does not qualify it differently

His piece about gold vs farmland is correct.   Gold is not an investment but the laws of physics wont be changing so the gold is not a risk as such though insurance on its theft is a cost.   Gold is savings or cash if you like but the farmland is investment and is normal risk vs return.   Gold has a yield of zero and its not supposed to be a profit but it is savings of your labour, your excess wealth in solid form so I really back that as the original meaning of the word; to save wages or saved labour paid, saved capital whatever.

The really confusing thing cash notes are not really cash.  A dollar bill is a zero coupon bond, its a promissory note and it has no value, its returns are a risk reliant on various departments of government.  We are supposed to see it as cash, its modern alchemy because it is not but thats how we use it.  

I still back WB as someone to learn from, you may have to sieve out all the dross he has taken on from politics but really I dont see him as a political player.  He does say he wants to be liked or he values influence, etc


I dont think he does things that differently but he does speak differently or not plainly on how bad gov is, for money, etc


Thats fair enough, we simulate that with interest rates and in the eighties we had to raise them to 20% to get people to think twice about dollars.  Plus other changes like the Chinese exporting perhaps helped.   You are right, its a brake on the bubbles or ponzis that appear indirectly from easy fed policy, they arent actually productive but we have no brakes now as gov cant afford higher rates hence gold is really the best idea

I've read a number of Buffet bios, as well as much of his own writings. I believe he very much liked and respected his father. I think the divide is due to different generations and experiences. By the time Warren was an adult, he was lucky to start his investing career during one of the biggest bull markets, and rises in aggregate living standards, in human history. I think that very much formed his opinion of the world. He's an eternal American optimist. Which is indeed great in many ways. He (probably) correctly asserts that life will, over the long-haul, keep getting better for most people. And further, that Western-style business and innovation will be the driver of such in the upcoming century as it has been in the past couple.

And so he chooses to, again pretty much correctly, focus on investing in companies; in the underlying organizations that generate new efficiencies for humankind (ie, rising living standards).

So it's no surprise that he hates gold. Indeed, gold is a ridiculous asset to hold. Since the moment we humans have needed to transact quickly over distance, gold has ceased being a good money, and hasn't been all that rational to hold for its own merits. Various geo-political dynamics have been the drivers, but all that stuff is so far removed from the underlying purity of efficiency generation that Buffet invests upon that he (mostly correctly, at least in the longrun) views gold "investing" as stupid, archaic, and absurd.

The irony is that Warren is something of a hard-headed purist just like his father. Again, he just focuses on the core drivers of human advancement (ie, companies generating innovation and efficiencies), while his father focused on the same from a different angle (ie, ensuring a playing field of pure/true free-market capitalism). I think the fact that Warren has lived and invested exclusively in probably the richest country and richest period in human history has very much *allowed* him to focus on the firm-internals side without having to worry all that much about the overarching economic-system side. To his mind, at least empirically, the latter has been totally fine....why worry about it?

Sitenote: I remember reading that many of the House votes ended up being: All-Reps-Besides-HowardBuffet vs. Howard Buffet. Reminds me a better-spoken (and probably smarter) Ron Paul.

I personally agree almost entirely with Warren's investment approach; including his opinion of gold. I obviously diverge with him on bitcoin. As a technically-educated person, it's far easier for me to see bitcoin as the ideal-money-for-our-times that it is than it is for Warren to see it and really appreciate that fact. I also haven't lived and invested through the biggest bull-generation in human history, so some of my thinking is more like his father Howard's as well. Those facts combined lead to me to consider bitcoin a fantastic investment; the fact that it's better money means it'll naturally gain market share (transaction volume), and I also find it to be an important freedom-ensuring innovation that fits nicely into the decentralizing tendencies of modern times.

But make no mistake; once bitcoin obtains mature transaction volume and adoption, I will not hold it as an investment, choosing instead to invest as best I can like Warren Buffet.

Keep buying dips.

Meanwhile, holdings in Belgium climbed $1.7 billion last month to $364.1 billion, the report showed.

Code words:  US. gubmint

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-15/u-s-investment-outflow-reaches-record-as-china-sells-treasuries.html

Hopefully they'll auction off Ben Lawsky first.

Nxt did not fork and bter has gotten most of the nxt back. I am now more bullish then ever! With the release of the instantdex around the corner (near instant trading on the asset exchange and decentralized crypto to crypto, nxt is preparing to be a force to be reckoned with.

I was quite impressed with nxt.  The developers released a version of the client that would reverse the stolen transaction only but the forgers did not accept the change.  This demonstrates the power of distributed consensus and hopefully the world takes notice.  Obvious threat to central banks is obvious.  Maybe POS has merit after all.