Bill Gross, co-founder and co-CIO of PIMCO, is to my mind one of the shrewdest money men around. His monthly newsletter, this month entitled “Anything but .01%”, therefore always makes for thought-provoking reading.

The following are a few excerpts from the report:

“Almost all money market accounts - totaling over $4 trillion dollars, yield close to nothing, so close to nothing that I mistakenly did a double take when reviewing my monthly portfolio statement. “Yield on cash”, read the buried line on page 15 of the report, “.01%”.

“Well now, I say to myself, this is very interesting from a number of different angles. If I was hoping to double my money, it would take approximately 6,932 years to get there at that rate! Secondly, being a savvy professional investor and all, I knew that money market funds actually earned 20 basis points or so

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Using animation, Warren Buffett eloquently explains in just more than two minutes why trade imbalances lead to serfdom. Put differently, and in the context of President Obama’s visit to China, “Thriftville” owns “Squanderville” in the endgame, as he explained in “I.O.U.S.A.: One Nation. Under Stress. In Debt“.

Source: YouTube.com, November 16, 2009 (hat tip: Wall St Cheat Sheet).

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In this post, Charlie Rose conducts an hour-long interview with Warren Buffett.

Click here or on the image below to view the video. (As there is no direct link to the clip, you need to click on “Archive” on the Charlie Rose site, and then scroll down to the Warren Buffett video of November 13.)

Source: Charlie Rose, November 13, 2009.

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Baltimore (TFN): What is wealth? It is a question all of us need to ask ourselves every so often. If not, we lose track of where we are heading and where we’ve been.

As you’re reading this, I am nowhere near my computer. In fact, I’m not even in the office today. I spent the last three days increasing my “wealth.”

We all have different definitions of the word. Some of us give it a strictly monetary connotation. There is nothing wrong with that. In its most straight-forward definition, wealth is the abundance of money.

But if I can take the risk of getting touchy-feely for a minute or two, I’d like to take it a bit further. To me, wealth is the abundance of everything good in our lives.

If that truly is the case then move over Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, I am one wealthy guy. I bet you

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Is Warren Buffett Signaling a Housing Recovery?

by Robert Williams, Publisher Thursday, November 5, 2009

Warren Buffett is teaming-up with Goldman Sachs as the investment bank attempts to buy $3 billion of tax credits from taxpayer-owned mortgage firm Fannie Mae.

According to The Wall Street Journal, investments in low-income housing tax credits has waned dramatically in the face of the credit crisis.

Credits are being sold for between 65 cents and 79 cents on the dollar. By comparison – at the height of the real estate boom – developers were fetching 95 cents on the dollar.

(Property developers receive tax credits – worth between 30% and 60% of a project’s cost – to encourage building in low-income areas and to hold rents down. They typically then sell the credits to large financial institutions for the tax benefits they offer.)

Although Buffett and Sachs surely intend

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Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) said on Tuesday that it is acquiring Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp (BNI) for $44 billion. This is the biggest acquisition ever for Berkshire Hathaway. With this acquisition, Berkshire Hathaway is adding the railroad transportation business to its already diverse range of businesses including retail sales, insurance and financials, newspaper publishing, manufacturing, business services and several regional electric and gas utilities. Berkshire Hathaway, which already owns 22.0% stake in Burlington Northern, has offered $100 per share in cash and stock for the remaining portion of the holding. The transaction which is contingent on approval by two-thirds of Burlington’s outstanding shareholders is expected to close by first quarter of 2010. Burlington Northern will continue operating from its Fort Worth, TX headquarters. Berkshire Hathaway also announced that its Class B common share (BRK.B) will be split off into 50 ...

Lost in today's news that Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) was acquiring Burlington Northern (BNI) was the announcement that Berkshire's "B" shares, or, commonly known by investors as the "cheaper" shares, would be split 50 to 1.

It is rare to see a stock split for either the Berkshire "A" shares or the "B" shares. Over the years, Warren Buffett has resisted calls to split the stock.

The "A" shares have long been out of reach for nearly everyone except professional investors. In the past 52 weeks, those shares traded in the range of $70,000 to $119,000 per share.

The "A" shares are obviously not very attainable for most investors.

Many investors turned to the "B" shares but even those "cheaper" shares traded in the range of $2241 to $3969 in the last 52 weeks. Again, for many investors, owning a share of Berkshire was likely out of

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What If Jeremy Grantham is Right?

by Alexander Green, Chief Investment Strategist

Jeremy Grantham, president of investment management firm GMO LLC, has been getting a lot of press lately.

At the market’s top, he warned of an impending bear market. At the bottom in March, he forecast a historic rally. Today, he says the market is 25% overvalued.

Should you be worried? Perhaps not.

Let’s start with Grantham’s track record. He’s made a couple of good calls lately. But does he get it right all the time? Of course not. No one does.

But even if he’s right, it wouldn’t necessarily be negative. It all depends on your time horizon. Here’s why…

How Long-Term Investors Can Benefit From A Bear Market

If you own stocks on margin, call options, or LEAP options, a market downturn could be devastating. A 50%

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It isn't fun being a value investor right now. Just 8 months ago, value investors had the stock markets at their feet. The S&P 500 was trading at just 10 times earnings, and some blue chips were trading at multi-decade lows.

And then, poof!

Before value investors could even blink, stocks moved higher and, so far, haven't looked back. Over the next 8 months, the valuation on the S&P 500 nearly doubled.

Make no mistake; the rally has been great. Every investor has benefitted. For value investors, current market conditions are both the best of times and the worst of times.

Who doesn't feel a tinge of jealousy as growth investors cash in on multi-decade highs for stocks like Amazon.com? If you're like me, sometimes it's tempting to just throw in the towel and follow the crowd into the growth stocks, even if they are trading with P/Es at 50 or higher.

But never

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Doug Casey is an American free-market market economist, financial author and entrepreneur. He has been writing a monthly investment newsletter, the International Speculator since 1979 and I always find his ideas quite refreshing. He is also somewhat of a perma gold bull as gleaned from an interview posted here a few days ago. In a follow-up discussion with Louis James, editor of the International Speculator, Casey focused on the outlook for gold stocks.

Here is the first section of Casey’s interview:

L: Doug, we were talking about gold last week, so we should follow up with a look at gold stocks. If one of the reasons to own gold is that it’s real - it’s not paper, it’s not simultaneously someone else’s liability - why own gold stocks?

Doug: Leverage. Gold stocks are problematical as investments. That’s true of all resource stocks, especially

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