Links - 03/21/2022
“In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.” —Rudiger Dornbusch
Berkshire Hathaway to Acquire Alleghany Corporation for $848.02 Per Share in $11.6 Billion Transaction (LINK)
Related links to the above: 1) For those generally interested in learning more about insurance, see the Learning Insurance section of this link, which has some great reading recommendations; and 2) Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger on float and insurance in 1996.
Inside Putin’s circle — the real Russian elite [H/T Linc] (LINK)
Howard Marks talks with the Youth Financial Summit (video) [H/T Linc] (LINK)
Richard Bernstein on WealthTrack—How to: Re-evaluate Portfolio for a New Era of Higher Inflation (video) (LINK)
Russia in Ukraine: Let Loose the Dogs of War! - by Aswath Damodaran (LINK)
Inside the Nickel Market Failure: Massive Trades the Exchange Didn’t See (LINK)
The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto (LINK)
Moderate risk tolerance (LINK)
A Fool and His Gold (LINK)
Goehring & Rozencwajg’s Outlook on Energy and Inflation (video) (LINK)
Grant’s Current Yield Podcast: Opportunities in commodities (LINK)
This Week in Startups Podcast: Investing lessons from Gotham Capital's Joel Greenblatt (video, with Greenblatt starting at the 1:05:50 mark) [H/T Linc] (LINK)
This Week in Intelligent Investing Podcast: SPECIAL: Roger Lowenstein on Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War (LINK)
Related book: Ways and Means
The David Rubenstein Show: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky [video, recorded Feb. 16.] (LINK)
The Skift Podcast: What Happened When the World Stopped Traveling (LINK)
Related link: The Oral History of March 2020: The Month Global Travel Shut Down
How I Built This Podcast: Wordpress & Automattic: Matt Mullenweg (LINK)
Odd Lots Podcast: Here’s How Messy a Russian Bond Default Could Be (LINK)
Hidden Forces Podcast: The Battle for Ukraine & Prospects for World War III | Peter Zeihan (LINK)
Danger Close Podcast: Peter Zeihan: The End of the World Is Just the Beginning (LINK)
Forward Guidance Podcast: Short Selling in the Age of Fraud | Carson Block (LINK)
KindredCast Podcast: Tim Ferriss On Finding Success In The Uncomfortable Moments (LINK)
The Rest Is History Podcast: 165. The Rise of Genghis Khan (LINK)
The New Yorker: Politics and More Podcast: How Do We Know When Someone Is a Spy? [with Evan Osnos] (LINK)
How did supermassive black holes get so big so fast? To find out, scientists turn to the dark sector (LINK)
America’s Flu-Shot Problem Is Also Its Next COVID-Shot Problem (LINK)
Michael F. Price, a Pugnacious Value Investor, Has Died at Age 70 (LINK)
“In practical terms, a limit-embracing attitude to time means organizing your days with the understanding that you definitely won’t have time for everything you want to do, or that other people want you to do—and so, at the very least, you can stop beating yourself up for failing. Since hard choices are unavoidable, what matters is learning to make them consciously, deciding what to focus on and what to neglect, rather than letting them get made by default—or deceiving yourself that, with enough hard work and the right time management tricks, you might not have to make them at all. It also means resisting the seductive temptation to ‘keep your options open’—which is really just another way of trying to feel in control—in favor of deliberately making big, daunting, irreversible commitments, which you can’t know in advance will turn out for the best, but which reliably prove more fulfilling in the end. And it means standing firm in the face of FOMO, the ‘fear of missing out,’ because you come to realize that missing out on something—indeed, on almost everything—is basically guaranteed. Which isn’t actually a problem anyway, it turns out, because ‘missing out’ is what makes our choices meaningful in the first place. Every decision to use a portion of time on anything represents the sacrifice of all the other ways in which you could have spent that time, but didn’t—and to willingly make that sacrifice is to take a stand, without reservation, on what matters most to you. I should probably clarify that I have yet to attain perfection in any of these attitudes; I wrote this book for myself, as much as for anyone else, putting my faith in the words of the author Richard Bach: ‘You teach best what you most need to learn.’” —Oliver Burkeman (“Four Thousand Weeks”)