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Programming note: On Thursday I'll be back on radio with the audio edition of Steyn's Song of the Week, and this one's a corker. Please join me at 9pm British Summer Time - that's 4pm North American Eastern. You can listen from anywhere on the planet by

Mark takes questions from Steyn Club members around the world...

Do Austrian theories also apply to financial markets?

A survey by the Methodist Centre reveals the concern of people over 75, indirect victims of the exodus of young families caused by the security crackdown after the 2019 protests. Meanwhile, an appeal court accepts the authorities' request to ban "Glory to Hong Kong", the song that became the protest movement's anthem.

It’s not been a good week for the Censorship Industrial Complex. 

The machine has been built and put into action over nearly a decade but largely in secret. Its way of doing business has been via surreptitious contacts with media and tech companies, intelligence carve-outs in “fact-checking” organizations, payoffs, and various other clever strategies, all directed toward boosting some sources of information and suppressing others. The goal has always been to advance regime narratives and curate the public mind. 

And yet, based on its operations and insofar as we can tell, it had every intention of remaining secret. This is for a reason. A systematic effort by government to bully private sector companies into a particular narrative while suppressing dissent contradicts American law and tradition. It also violates human rights as understood since the Enlightenment. It was a consensus, until very recently, that free speech was essential to the functioning of the good society. 

Four years ago, many of us suspected censorship was going on, that the throttling and banning was not merely a mistake or the result of zealous employees stepping out of line. Three years ago, the proof started to arrive. Two years ago, it became a flood. With the Twitter files from a year ago, we had all the proof we needed that the censorship was systematic, directed, and highly effective. But even then, we only knew a fraction of it. 

Thanks to discovery from court cases, FOIA requests, whistleblowers, Congressional inquiries thanks to the very narrow Republican control, and some industrial upheavals such as what happened at Twitter, we are overwhelmed with tens of thousands of pages all pointing to the same reality. 

The censors developed a belief at the highest levels of control in government that it was their job to govern what information the American people would and would not see, regardless of the truth. The actions became truly tribal: our side favors banning gatherings, closing schools, says the Hunter Biden laptop is a fake, favors masking, mass vaccination, and mail-in voting, and denies the import of voter fraud and vaccine injury, whereas their side takes the opposite approach. 

It was a war over information, undertaken in total disregard for the First Amendment, as if it doesn’t even exist. Moreover, the operation was not only political. It clearly involved intelligence agencies that were already hip deep in the “all-of-society” pandemic response. 

“All of Society” means all, including the information you receive and are allowed to distribute. 

A vast swath of unelected bureaucrats took it upon themselves to manage all knowledge flows in the age of the Internet, with the ambition to turn the main source of news and sharing into a giant American version of Pravda. All of this occurred right under our noses – and is still going on today. 

Indeed, censorship is a full-on industry now, with hundreds and thousands of cut-outs, universities, media companies, government agencies, and even young people in school studying to be disinformation specialists, and bragging about it on social media. We are just one step away from a New York Times article – as follow-ups to their recent praise of the Deep State and also government surveillance – with a headline like “The Good Society Needs Censors.”

Incredibly, the censorship is so pervasive now that it is not even reported. All these revelations should have been front page news. But so captured is the news media today that there are very few outlets that even bother to report the fullness of the problem. 

Not receiving nearly enough attention is the new report from the Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government of the US House of Representatives. 

Running nearly 1,000 pages including documentation (however many pages are purposely blank), we have here an overwhelming amount of evidence of a systematic, aggressive, and deeply entrenched effort on the part of the federal government, including the Biden White House and many agencies including the World Health Organization, to tear out the guts of the Internet and social media culture and replace them with propaganda. 

Among the well-documented facts are that the White House directly intervened in Amazon’s own marketing methods to deprecate books that raised doubts about the Covid vaccine and all vaccines. Amazon responded reluctantly but did what it could to satisfy the censors. All these companies – Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon – became acquiescent to Biden administration priorities, even to the point of running algorithmic changes by the White House before implementation. 

When YouTube announced that it would take down any content that contradicted the World Health Organization, it was because the White House instructed them to do so. 

As for Amazon, which is like every publisher in wanting full freedom to distribute, they faced intense pressure from government. 

These are just a few of thousands of pieces of evidence of routine interference from government against social media companies, either directly or through various government-funded cut-outs, all designed to enforce a certain way of thinking on the American public. 

What’s amazing is that this industry was allowed to metastasize to such an extent over 4-8 years or so, with no legal oversight and very little knowledge on the part of the public. It’s as if there is no such thing as the First Amendment. It’s a dead letter. Even now, the Supreme Court seems confused, based on our reading of the oral arguments over this whole case (Murthy v. Missouri). 

One gets the sense when reading through all this correspondence that the companies were more than a bit rattled by the pressure. They must have wondered a few things: 1) is this normal? 2) do we really have to go along? 3) what happens to us if we just say no?

Probably every corner grocery store in any neighborhood run by a crime syndicate in history has asked these questions. The best answer is to do what you can in order to make them go away. This is precisely what they did time after time. After a while, the protocol probably begins to feel normal and no one asks anymore the basic questions: is this right? Is this freedom? Is this legal? Is this just the way things go in the US?

No matter how many high officials were involved, how many in the C-suites of big companies participated, however many editors and technicians of the best credentials played along, there can be no question that what took place was an absolute violation of speech rights that very likely exceeds anything we’ve seen in US history. 

Keep in mind that we only know what we know, and that is severely truncated by the force of the machinery. We can safely assume that the truth actually is far worse than we know. And further consider that this censorship is keeping us from knowing the full story about the suppression of dissidents, whether medical, scientific, political, or otherwise. 

There might be millions in many professions who are suffering right now, in silence. Or think of the vaccine-injured or those who have lost loved ones who were forced to get the shot. There are no headlines. There are no investigations. There is almost no public attention at all. Most of the venues that we once thought would police such outrages have been compromised. 

To top it off, the censors are still not backing down. If you sense a lessening of the grip for now, there is every reason to believe it is temporary. This industry wants the entire Internet as we once conceived of it completely shut down. That’s the goal.

At this point, the best means of defeating this plan is widespread public outrage. That is made more difficult because the censorship itself is being censored. 

This is why this report from the US House of Representatives needs to be widely shared so long as doing so is possible. It could be that such reports in the future will themselves be censored. It could also be the last such report you will ever see before the curtain falls on freedom completely. 

Reprinted with permission from Brownstone Institute.

Countries bent by war and violence remembered: Palestine, Israel, Ukraine and Myanmar again recalled at the Wednesday audience. May the intercession of St Stanislaus 'obtain also today the gift of peace in Europe and throughout the world'. The theological virtue of hope, accompanied by patience, belongs to those who "stubbornly desire peace".

The Philippine central bank has approved the PHPC, a stablecoin pegged to the Philippine peso to reduce its volatility. The coins.ph platform aims to reach 20,000 to 30,000 users within a month. About 10 million Filipinos live abroad, eager to cut transaction costs with the new digital currency.

Republicans Rush to Protect Netanyahu Government from the International Criminal Court

The Final Solution has priority over law, Republicans tell the ICC

https://www.rt.com/news/597203-axios-us-reps-sanctions-icc-israel/

In addition to the universal feasts of the Mother of God, from the Immaculate Conception to the Assumption, the Church also keeps local feasts connected with major centers of Marian devotion such as Loreto in Italy, Walsingham in England, Guadalupe in Mexico etc. A similar custom holds in regard to the Archangel Michael, and in one sense, may be called a universal custom of the Western Church. Gregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0

The American Police Support Israel’s Genocide of the Palestinians

So don’t expect them to oppose your genocide.

https://www.unz.com/article/the-beast-of-ideology-lifts-the-lid-on-transformation/

Boy Scouts of America No Longer Exists

Another male preserve destroyed

In keeping with our Woke times, the organization has been repositioned as a homosexual/transgender/multi-gender organization.

Littler wonder its membership is declining.

https://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/boy-scouts-of-america-changing-name-to-more-inclusive-scouting-america-after-years-of-woes/42PRKHPCXZEF7KITIM2V7I4ATY/

Here is Dr. Naomi Wolf Explaining what “God’s Chosen People” Really Means

https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/1560-geneva-bible-exodus-19-20?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#media-35f74c7f-c4b6-41e6-88c2-04e0541b4efa

As a feminist leader Dr. Wolf was on top of the liberal-left world. But when her grasp of reality strengthened, her conversion to truth-teller found her derided and exiled from the Woke-ruled American intellectual world.

Others who have mistakenly thought that truth was still respected and departed from the official narratives groveled and apologized, but not Naomi. There is strength and goodness in this woman. We should be thankful for her and support her.

Putin Is Letting It Get Too Late to Turn Aside from Nuclear Armageddon

Paul Craig Roberts

The Russian government including President Putin now publicly acknowledges that Western provocations are increasing in scope and seriousness and are spinning the Ukrainian conflict out of control.

The Russian government has stated that the American F-16 aircraft supplied to Ukraine by the idiotic governments of Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium will “be treated as nuclear-capable weapons.”

Dmitry Medvedev, former President of Russia and currently deputy director of the Russian Security Council has declared the West’s leaders to be “infantile morons” whose ignorant arrogance is leading to their destruction.

Alarmed by the increasing likelihood of NATO and US soldiers deployed to Ukraine and by the British Foreign Secretary’s statement that there are no prohibitions on Ukraine’s use of the UK-provided long range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory, President Putin has ordered the Russian Ministry of Defense to conduct exercises to guarantee Russia’s ability to rapidly deploy battlefield nuclear weapons.

Medvedev stated that while the moronic French president speaks of “strategic ambiguity,” for Russia there is no ambiguity. Russia’s “response will not be in Ukraine. There will be no hiding on Capitol Hill, in the Elysee Palace or at 10 Downing Street.”

These developments confirm that I was correct that Putin’s never-ending conflict would permit ever increasing Western interventions until the situation spins out of control. As Putin has never enforced any of his many red lines that the West has crossed in Ukraine, the West no longer regards Russian warnings as meaningful. The warnings are welcomed and used as propaganda to further rouse Western populations to “the Russian threat.”

I find it bewildering that Putin, and apparently Xi, still think the West will come to its senses and accept a multipolar world. The ignored reality is that Washington cannot possibly reposition Russia from enemy to trusted partner. Despite the enormous increase in provocations and elevation of tension, Russia and China are still unable to accept reality. In his inaugural speech Putin again gave his assurance that Russia does not renounce dialogue with the West. Apparently Putin is willing to be forever deceived as he was for eight years by the Minsk Agreement. Putin thinks the atmosphere has changed and today “reliability, mutual responsibility, sincerity, decency, nobility and courage” are highly valued. By whom, President Putin? Most certainly not by the West.

Putin’s aversion to reality is buttressed by that of Russian foreign affairs “experts.” For example, Andrey Bystritsky of the Valdai Discussion Club claims that Putin’s openness to dialogue with the US about a mutual security system will “undoubtedly be heard in the West. There is no doubt about it. They are listening carefully.” Please name one leader in the West who is seeking “diplomatic solutions.” If any such leader exists, he clearly has no influence. The French president has sent French Foreign Legion troops to Ukraine. The UK foreign minister has sent Ukraine long-range missiles with which to attack deep into Russia. The Lithuanian prime minister dismisses Russian warnings and says she is ready to send troops to Ukraine. Biden calls the Russian president “Hitler” to justify more armaments and money for Ukraine. These are not the words and deeds of those seeking diplomatic solutions. Russians have a difficult time engaging with reality, and it is the Russian failure to accept reality that is leading to nuclear war.

Putin does not understand that in America ruled by anti-national, anti-white, anti-gentile, anti-heterosexual ideologies, the only remaining cement holding a dissolving society together is propaganda about “foreign enemies.” American conservatives and super-patriots (USA! USA! USA!) oppressed by their own government rally to the support of their oppressive government against “foreign enemies.” The designation of Russia, China, and Iran as enemies is essential for unity and for the power and profit of the powerful military/security complex. Without the propaganda, expressed by UK, EU, Biden and US Congressional leaders that Russia will next invade Europe, what would hold the West together? With the enormous investment Washington has in the portrait of Russia as Hitlerite evil, how can the Kremlin possibly entertain the hope of a partnership?

If Putin does not quickly bring an inexcusably over-long conflict to a victorious end before Ukraine fills up with Western troops, he will bequeath nuclear Armageddon to the world.

https://www.rt.com/russia/597054-medvedev-nuclear-drill-nato/

https://www.rt.com/news/597053-democrat-leader-us-troops-ukraine/

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-warns-ukraines-f-16s-will-treated-nuclear-threats-1897700

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240506/russias-not-bluffing-tactical-nuke-drills-are-deafening-warning-to-nato-to-stay-out-of-ukraine-1118294192.html

https://tass.com/politics/1784091

https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1948389/

I wonder at times how, if God gives me the grace of doing it, I will be informed of the death of that scoundrel, Francis. One way I would like would be that I arrive at the office and, my Catholic leanings being well known there, I am immediately confronted with the usual “have you […]

Progressive historians, journalists, and politicians claim that the Industrial Revolution and the growth of industry brought poverty and exploitation to American workers. The truth is much different, even if it is rarely heard.

Blooms come, they say, from April showers,
All else comes of the three powers,
Which I can name in a short list:
The purse, the pen, the pounding fist.

If the purse should aught require,
It can purchase, rent or hire,
All goods being to market brought,
All men on offer to be bought,
It can suborn, incentivize,
Pay fists to pound, pens to write lies.

The pen to enlist volunteers,
Fills hearts with lusts and heads with fears,
Sparks firestorms of righteous rage,
Plays now the pander, now the sage,
Coaxes the tight-tied  purse to spill,
Cajoles the pounding fist to kill.

And very few can long can resist
Persuasion by the pounding fist,
So what brute force wants, it gets,
The toadying praise of scribbling wits,
The contents of the tight-tied purse,
These and much more it can coerce.

Sniff if you like the bright May flowers,
Slave you remain to these three powers,
Bought by the purse, by pen bewitched,
By pounding fist to hard toil hitched.

The building is accessible to the public and the faithful after the official inauguration ceremony. The former Christian place of worship was converted by presidential decree in August 2020. President Erdogan extols the thousands of 'ancestral heritage sites' to which he would 'breathe new life', but makes no mention of its origin as a basilica.

On the heels of Apple’s latest earnings report, the Wall Street Journal shared an article discussing how Apple became such an oversized investment of Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway. Given their success with Apple shares we think it is worth understanding the logic that drove Buffett to accumulate such a large position in Apple.

Unbeknownst to most, Todd Combs, a member of the Berkshire portfolio management team, is responsible for bringing Apple to Buffett’s attention. However, not all credit goes to Combs. Buffett presented Combs with a challenge that ultimately highlighted Apple’s value proposition. With this same challenge, we will take a stab at finding the next Apple.

The inspiration for our challenge and a few quotes in this article come from a Wall Street Journal article entitled Apple is Buffett’s Best Investment.

Berkshires Massive Stake Of Apple

Before finding the next Apple stock, it’s worth visualizing how Berkshire’s investment in Apple has grown over time as a percentage of Berkshire Hathaway and of Apple’s total shares outstanding.

The bar graph below compares Berkshire’s percentage ownership of Apple to that of the four largest mutual fund and ETF complexes. Berkshire had no position in Apple in 2015 and now holds over 5% of the company. Only Vanguard has a more significant position.

The following graphs plot the surge in the number of shares owned by Berkshire and the value of its shares.

The pie chart below shows that Apple comprises almost half of Berkshire’s portfolio. The next largest holding is Bank of America at 10%.

Buffett Doesn’t Like Tech

Ironically, when Berkshire started buying Apple shares, Warren Buffett had an aversion to technology stocks. When asked why, he said he didn’t invest in companies he didn’t understand. He now admits that was a mistake.

While it may have been a mistake not to buy more technology companies in the mid twenty-teens, Buffett was able to appreciate what Apple truly was. While it is classified as and widely considered a technology company, Buffett got his head around Apple by likening it to a consumer goods company. Per the aforementioned Wall Street Journal article:

Considering the stock, though, Buffett began to see it as a consumer-goods company with enviable, latent pricing power, rather than as a tech or an electronic-device maker, according to people who have spoken to him. The loyalty consumers had for Apple products, especially the iPhone, suggested to Buffett that they would be willing to pay much more for upgraded versions of the phone in the years ahead, a sure way to boost profits.

Todd Combs- The Unknown Mastermind

The Wall Street Journal article introduces Todd Combs, one of Berkshire Hathaway’s lesser-known portfolio managers. According to the article, around 2016, Buffett challenged Combs to find a stock that met specific criteria.

Among the stocks Combs found meeting the fundamental criteria and large enough for Berkshire to purchase was Apple. The rest is history. Since they started accumulating Apple in 2015, it has gained 650%, more than four times the S&P 500 over the same period.

Given Combs’ success, we thought it would be interesting to use the logic Buffett challenged Combs with and produce a similar scan. Let’s see if we can find the next Apple.  

Buffett’s Logic

The following paragraph from the WSJ article is the logic Buffett imparted to Combs, leading to their ownership of Apple.

This time, Buffett asked Combs to identify a stock in the S&P 500 that met three criteria. The first: a reasonably cheap price/earnings multiple of no more than 15, based on the next 12 months’ projected earnings. The stock also had to be one the managers were at least 90% sure would enjoy higher earnings over the next five years. And they had to be at least 50% confident that the company’s earnings would grow by at least 7% annually for five years or longer.

What made the search a little more difficult was that the companies that met the criteria also had to have a market cap large enough so Berkshire could buy enough of to move the needle of its portfolio but not overly impact the demand for the stock.

The Combs Scan

In addition to the criteria in Buffett’s challenge, we added sales growth of at least 5% over the last five years. This helps us thin the list of companies to those already exhibiting strong top-line growth. We also removed financial, limited partnerships, REITs, and real estate stocks as their valuations and growth rates are not as easily comparable using traditional valuation metrics. Lastly, we disqualified Chinese companies due to the potential for political implications.

The following are the factors we used to screen for the next Apple.

• Market cap > $50 billion
• Price to Forward Earnings <15
• Five-year expected earnings growth >5%
• Sales growth in last five years > 5%
• No financial, limited partnerships, REITs, real estate, or Chinese companies.

Many stocks meet the size, earnings, and sales growth criteria. But only two companies have cheap enough valuations to make the cut as shown below. 

Currently, Berkshire has 5.242 million shares of T-Mobile, which is .20% of the portfolio. T-Mobile met our criteria, but its 5-year expected earnings growth is slightly below Buffett’s 7% bogey.

Berkshire does not hold EOG but has other oil and gas exploration companies, including Occidental Petroleum and Chevron.

Summary

Warren Buffett is an investing legend and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He takes a value orientation with a long-term investment horizon.

The Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, which also owns private companies, has done exceptionally well versus the market, as shown below. However, he goes through prolonged periods of poor relative performance versus the market.

The graph shows that over the last 30 years, Berkshire’s price return has tripled that of the S&P 500. However, there are four notable extended periods where he grossly underperformed the market. Also of note is that Berkshire handily beat the market in the recession and drawdowns of the dot com bubble and financial crisis. Such attests to his value orientation.

The post Finding The Next Apple Using Buffetts Logic appeared first on RIA.

The 747 Anglo-Saxon Council of Cloveshoe attempted to purify the Rogations from Vanitatibus and maioribus epulis. But a reading of Duffy [Stripping; hereinunder plundered by this post] makes one wonder whether the English peasantry ever  ... er ... quite internalised Cloveshoe canon 16! Some quotations: "and then they had there some ale or drinkings". "they [went] about the bounds of Fr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com3