Gongol.com Archives: March 2021
March 1, 2021
"Berkshire [Hathaway] has spent about $4.4 billion buying back its stock in the first six weeks of this year". Another way to look at it: Berkshire issued a large, tax-free dividend to the shareholders who remained. There are good repurchases, and then there are bad ones. Bad ones happen, for instance, when a company issues shares as rewards to insiders (like executives and board members), then repurchases them as an accounting stunt. Berkshire Hathaway's current repurchases are happening because management thinks the market is under-pricing the company. That's good repurchasing.
What reasonable person pays $100,000 in tuition for a journalism degree?
Someone's offering that as a menu price, which causes Matthew Martin to ask: "Is a masters in journalism a conspicuous consumption good[?]". It might truly be, and that's neither good for the journalists nor for the public.
How do you raise the profiles of governors?
Jonathan Martin: "Solution: Compulsory TV coverage of summer and winter NGAs". We could start by making the winter meeting a Festivus Special. Tune in for the airing of grievances! Don't miss the feats of strength! Superficially, it's a gag, of course. But the fact remains that most national reporting on politics comes from people working and living mainly in two places: DC and New York. That skews perceptions of what is, in fact, a great big country. Or, perhaps more closely, a great big collection of mini-Americas, each with its own special take on how government is done.
