OT WSJ -- Does the estate tax hurt farmers and family businesses?

I must be a liberal - at least I consider the hatred that passes as "conservative" to be just that, stupid hate speech, so that must make me liberal - I have worked all my live, never accepted public funds, paid my own way through universities, paid cash for my cars, my house is paid for, I donate to charities, I have multiple patents, a long list of published articles, equipment that I designed operating world wide. Now, tell us EXACTLY AND PRECISELY what I "confiscated from productive people", and tell us why I am not productive. If you cannot do that, you prove to the world that you are just a lying troll

Did you vote for the people that perpetuate keeping the lower end of society in their place in order to maintain their power base? The only "hate speech" I have is for the manipulators of those less fortunate. Since YOU voted those people into power, you share the responsibility of their actions.

I am a big fan of the ideas espoused in Intelligent Investor.

I suspected as much. You are now knighted a Contrarian.

May the House of Igor prosper.

Joe Gwinn

And same to you, too. Being a contrarian, lowers the risk, as the riskiest thing to do is to do what everyone else is doing.

Worked (big time, I mean BIG BIG TIME) for Michael Lewis!

See "The Big Short"

All you have to do is figure out where people are playing follow-the-leader in a bubble buildup.

And bet against them.

{From Wiki}

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine is a 2010 non-fiction book by Michael Lewis about the build-up of the housing and credit bubble during the 2000s. It describes several of the key players in the creation of the credit default swap market that sought to bet against the bubble and thus ended up profiting from the financial crisis of 2007?2010. The book also highlights the eccentric nature of the type of person who bets against the market or goes against the grain. The work follows people who believed the bubble was going to burst, like Meredith Whitney, who predicted the demise of Citigroup and Bear Stearns; Steve Eisman, an anti-social hedge fund manager; Greg Lippmann, a Deutsche Bank trader that created the first CDS market by matching buyers and sellers; the founders of Cornwall Capital, who started a hedge fund in their garage with $100,000 and built it into $120 million when the market crashed; and Dr. Michael Burry, an ex-neurologist who created Scion Capital despite suffering from blindness in one eye and Asperger syndrome[1]. The book also highlights some of the biggest losses created by the market crash: like Merrill's $300 million mezzanine CDO manager Wing Chau; Howie Hubler, infamously known as the person who lost $9 billion in one trade, the largest single loss in history; and Joseph Cassano's AIG Financial Products, which suffered over $99 billion in losses .

It does not discuss much about John Paulson, a founder and president of Paulson & Co., a New York-based hedge fund that made $15 billion dollars in one year.

It was shortlisted for the 2010 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. It spent 28 weeks on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list.

And an interesting read as well (Richard)

Michael Lewis wrote a great book about it. He did not speculate on housing market. The book is most educational and well written.

While this is true, I personally no longer, ever, sell anything short, regardless of how smart it seems to be. I consider the risk, and heartburn, form short selling, to make it not worth it.

Sorry Ig, You are right on. It was "about" Michael Burry...

But that's where the money is these days~!

Not really. It's a collection of anecdotes.

True there were more involved. But it didn't read like anecdotes...

Add this to your reading list as well. Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson "Winner-Take-All Politics."

Thanks, John. Wilco