An articulate overview of the government shutdown. Worth two minutes.

Well said.

Meta just parked $30B in AI data center debt off its balance sheet via SPVs. Morgan Stanley sees tech needing $800B in private credit by 2028 for similar off-books plays. UBS: $100B AI debt quarterly “raises eyebrows for anyone who’s seen credit cycles.” Not Enron fraud, but opacity + scale = familiar vibes. Big Tech cash flows are strong, assets are investment grade but chips get obsolete fast. Still, $1T+ in AI debt by 2028 could strand billions if returns lag. Efficient scaling or late-cycle bubble? Footnotes matter more than headlines. You make the call.

Give it a try, it really works.

Berkshire Hathaway reported very solid 3Q earnings this morning. I’m glad I’m not the analyst who downgraded Berkshire this week expecting weak earnings! 😃 Operating earnings rose 17.6% against 2024’s third quarter, properly excluding currency fluctuations on its borrowing in three foreign currencies. Most will report that operating earnings rose 33.7% The dollar rose slightly for the quarter and declined by much more a year ago. Cash increased to $358.4 billion, NOT the $381.7 billion which most will report. The correct lower figure nets out a $23.2 billion liability for Treasury bills purchased on the last day of the quarter. Most observers simply use cash and bills reported on the asset side of the balance sheet and neglect the occasional payable. I dream of the day that Berkshire spends all of its cash on a T-bill on the last day of a quarter or year. Firmwide assets exceeded $1.2 trillion for the first time with book value climbing to $698 billion. Berkshire was again a net seller of common stocks, selling a net $6.1 billion for the quarter and $10.6 billion YTD. No shares were repurchased. I’d thought they might have bought a bit when the stock retreated from its highs. At its August lows the stock was fundamentally undervalued to the same degree as when BRK last repurchased shares in 2Q 2024. Overall profitability was terrific. Insurance underwriting was terrific. GEICO posted nearly $1.8 billion of underwriting profit, an 84.3% combined ratio (versus 81.0% last year) and 5% growth in both premiums and policies in force. Until combined ratios climb to the high 90s or breakeven for the private passenger auto insurance industry, no insurance commission will grant price increases. In other words, insurers will over earn until loss cost inflation erodes profitability back to more normal levels. BH Primary earned $506 million pretax, a solid 89.3% combined, against losses a year ago while Berkshire’s reinsurance group earned $884 million in a quarter devoid of material catastrophe losses. Investment income predictably declined as short-term interest rates fell. Berkshire’s manufacturing, service and retail businesses rose an impressive 8.2% for the quarter and 4.8% year to date with notable contributions from Precision Castparts and Marmon. The railroad continues to improve with modest increases in car loadings and core pricing gains. Room remains on improving operations and overhead. The only real weak spot across Berkshire’s main subsidiaries was in the energy business, where an additional $100 million accrual for 2020’s PacifiCorp wildfire litigation, increasing operating expenses and a lower tax benefit combined to harm reported results. Overall solid albeit quiet quarter. The recent small (for Berkshire) $9.7 billion announced acquisition of OxyChem from Occidental is a nice bolt-on deal, essentially paying about 10x mid-cycle free cash earnings for well-maintained chlor alkali assets. With one quarter remaining until Warren passes the baton to Greg Abel, Berkshire is in good shape and in good hands.

Insane fact that sounds fake, but it's true... The Mississippi river basin has more miles of navigable river than the rest of the world combined.

Sandy Koufax, who pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers, watching Clayton Kershaw in extra inning in his last World Series is as good as it gets for baseball history nerds.

This didn't have to happen Lina. @linamkhan cnb.cx/47tFpMm

Excellent job Lina Khan, you successfully destroyed iRobot, a company that Amazon wanted to purchase, but you blocked it for fear of a creating some kind of robot vacuum monopoly. Now which companies are winning? Well of course Roborock, a Chinese robot vacuum company that's flooded the US market and has better infrastructure and development. Another example of our own government destroying our own companies for the benefit of foreign competitors.

Mr. Napoleon Hill. On fear rehearsal. A good time to read this…

Nasdaq 29x earnings.. broken record SPX EW 17x

Can Governor Newsom explain why greedy oil companies limit their greed to west coast states?

As a young man, Julius Caesar was traveling to Rhodes to study (as an orator — early believer in going direct!) His ship was attacked by pirates and Caesar was taken hostage. They demanded a ransom of 20 talents (~$15 million). Caesar, who totally didn’t have the money, nonetheless said something to the effect of, “wtf guys I’m worth at least 50.” So the pirates increased the ransom and Caesar sent his people to raise that money from nearby cities. That process took a little over a month, during which time Caesar made himself at home among the pirates. He’d yell at them to be quiet if he was trying to sleep. He’d write poetry that he’d read aloud and would insult and threaten the pirates if they didn’t applaud. He’d repeatedly remind them that once he was free, he would return and crucify them all. And they’d laugh; it was all good fun. [foreshadowing] When the ransom arrived, the pirates released Caesar at a nearby port. He immediately raised a fleet, ie, convinced the local authorities to let him take a few ships and recruited men to join him. He sailed back to the pirates, captured all of them, took back his 50 talents of ransom money, and also took the rest of their plunder. Then he handed them over to the local governor for punishment. When the governor was slow to act, Caesar (who, to be clear, had no legal right to do this but just had a lot of sway) stepped in. He seized the pirates and, following through on his promise, had them all crucified. Some sources say he had grown fond of them and did show mercy, by cutting their throats beforehand. Some men you just don’t mess with. For Caesar, destiny itself was negotiable and he was a tough negotiator. The point is, though, despite all this he never was able to start a successful fintech company.

J.R. Simplot had the craziest career pivot ever.  Born in 1909, he made billions with Idaho potatoes (1/2 of McDonald's fries) then seed-funded the now $230B Micron Technology in 1980 (a peak stake of 40%).  > Leaves home at 14 years old > His mom gives him $80 > Takes the money and buys interest-bearing paper ("scrip") at 50% of face value from local Idaho teachers who need cash > Borrows $600 from the bank using scrip as collateral  > Buys 600 pigs  > Finds a new way to make pig slop (boil potato scraps and horse meat) that make his pigs fatter than other farms and earns $7,000 in 1923 > Never graduates high school and goes full potato entrepreneur > Pioneers potato-farming technology including automatic sorters in 30s (makes his first million), dehydrators in 40s (adapts onion dehydrating tech for potatoes and feeds US army in WWII) and freezing in 60s (develops new method and provides Ray Croc with 1/2 of his frozen french fry needs for McDonald's in mid-1960s) Makes his first billion with McDonald’s and drives around Boise with a license plate that reads "SPUD" (what a boss). Then pivots: > In 1980, he's approached to fund Micron Technology, which wants to build a DRAM memory chip fab in Boise > Simplot know nothing about computers but realizes that DRAM -- due to Japanese competition -- has become a commodity market that requires massive capital investments with razor-thin margins...just like potatoes  > Invests $1m for 40% of Micron and spends millions more building a fab > The only way to win = “become the lowest-cost producer of the highest-quality product” > Micron capitalizes on Idaho's cheap energy/land and innovates manufacturing techniques to efficiently produce chips at scale  > Japan tariffs Simplot's potatoes so he lobbies the Reagan Administration to tariff Japanese semiconductors (in 1986, they apply a 100% tariff on $300m of Japanese chips) > By mid-1990s, the three largest players in DRAM are Micron Technology, SK Hynix and Samsung (South Korean firms entered market after Japanese firms exited) > Simplot owns ~20% of Micron and becomes a semiconductor billionaire  > He's asked about PCs during the Windows 95 launch but turns out he's never owned a computer and says "Hell, boy, I came before the goddamn typewriter.” Today, Micron Technology is a $230B firm and one of Boise's largest employers (Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung still own >90%of the DRAM market). Simplot passes away in 2008. Lived almost a century going from potato chips to semiconductor chips. Unreal.

THINK BIG ☘️ #GoIrish☘️ | @Gatorade

You’re not gonna believe this

They called these check swings back in the day 😂😂

Not sure normies understand how disastrous this is for the developer, so let me explain: At this stage in the process, all of the capital budgeted to build this apartment building has been drawn down and spent. This means that, in addition to having pay carrying costs (property tax, insurance, security, etc.) for this empty building, the developer is *also* paying interest on *all* the money to build it. Because the developer gets paid last (after the contractor, the construction lender and the equity investors), very likely this delay means this developer will make $0 for all his work building this thing. Let me ask you two questions: 1. If you took an enormous financial risk personally, convinced a whole bunch of your closest contacts to go in with you, worked for 3-4 years, and then made $0, would you do this ever again? and 2. If developers like this won't build again, how are we going to get the housing we need?

Another parabolic move, this time in oil:gold. Troughs in 1994, 1999, 2009, 2016, 2020 led to oil spiking in 1995, 2000, 2010, 2017 and 2021. I wonder what follows the 2025 trough.

One of my good friends pointed this out…Here’s an excerpt from the Nobel Peace Prize Winner’s interview shortly before she won the prize. Democrats far and wide need to read this carefully. @CAgovernor @Ilhan @RashidaTlaib @SpeakerPelosi @RepJeffries @BernieSanders @KamalaHarris @GovTimWalz @POTUS @DonaldJTrumpJr @SecScottBessent Nobel Laureate Maria Corina Machado: “Twenty-six years ago, Venezuelan youth fell in love with a socialist in Hugo Chávez. When people pointed to Cuba as a warning, they said, “Venezuela is not Cuba. And Cuba is not real socialism.” But here we are—worse than Cuba. Socialism always follows the same pattern. It elevates the state above the citizen, strips away your autonomy, your conscience, your dignity, your ability to choose. And it does so with a seductive lie. It whispers of equality, but the only equality it delivers is at the bottom—where everyone is dragged down together. That has been the case in every nation, on every continent, in every culture where it has been tried. The result is always the same: a gigantic state that crushes the people beneath it, and once it takes hold, is terribly hard to remove. Only free societies—where the individual comes first—can nurture both liberty and the responsibility that sustains it. Because freedom without responsibility decays, and responsibility without freedom is tyranny. But when merit becomes the path to rise, when effort and creativity are rewarded, then every citizen is called to succeed—the whole nation rises together. That is what we want for Venezuela. And it is why I say to the American people: Do not be seduced. Socialism is the sexiest path to losing your freedom. Guard your freedom jealously. Defend it fiercely. Because freedom is not just an American promise—it is the hope of the world.” 🎩 MP