re: #242 Kenneth

As I stated earlier, the numbers I am hearing are that Great Britain needs another $2 tn for its banking system and the EU continental banks need around $18 tn in order to get reasonably re-capitalized. That is a year’s GDP during normal times. These times are not normal. There is a lot of stuff going very wrong. KKR announced a horrid loss today on writedowns and KKR Financial (KFN) did much the same. Even BRK is going to hurt going forward. A lot of their stuff is private consumer oriented things. I am not sure that Warren is discounting them enough in his current valuations. Given that BRK does not pay a dividend, you are playing greater sucker if you think that you will get a stream of income from it. New taxable money should head toward closed end muni bond funds. They are all selling at a discount to NAV and at least pay you a dividend. The dividend is federally tax exempt except for the private activity bonds which may hit you if you are in AMT land. Some of the dividends are state tax exempt, but the majority will not be.