What Are You Currently Reading? 2015

**Backwards Observer** · 04-02-2015

The War Managers by Douglas Kinnard

The 14-Hour War: Valor on Koh Tang and the Recapture of the SS Mayaguez by James E. Wise Jr. and Scott Baron

**Backwards Observer** · 04-14-2015

Vietnam: the other war we need to remember - newspaper article - Hugh White - The Melbourne Age, 4/14/15

Arthur Calwell Speech - online pdf - 4/5/65

"The gentleman's name is Wong." Arthur Calwell, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debate, 2/12/47.

**Backwards Observer** · 04-16-2015

NICAP: The UFO Evidence by Richard H. Hall (ed.)

Our Dumb World by the Onion

**Roy Batty** · 04-16-2015

All of Shakespeare's English history plays. They're full of martial pomp, skullduggery and sly dealings, royalist egomania, spectacle and flourish...and contain some of his most memorable characters, such as Richard III, Falstaff, and Henry V.

In historical sequence, they are:

Richard the Second
Henry the Fourth, Part One
Henry the Fourth, Part Two
Henry the Fifth
Henry the Sixth, Part One
Henry the Sixth, Part Two
Henry the Sixth, Part Three
Richard the Third

...I'm leaving out Henry the Eighth and King John because they're annoying.

**Firn** · 04-27-2015

Berkshire was a mighty success in the last fifty year and any long-term shareholder's slice has become much more valuable. Two special letters were written by the Chairman and Vice-Chairman to look fifty years back and fifty ahead. Munger came up with a handy list of the 'Berkshire system' which has some queer similarities with Truppenfuehrung of all things and some of the stuff in the Human face of War. Obviously there are also vast differences between one 'business' and the other, and I'm no fan of, let us say, Clausewitz for Business. Still in some cases the essence is surprisingly similar.

The management system and policies of Berkshire under Buffett (herein together called “the Berkshire system”) were fixed early and are described below:

(1) Berkshire would be a diffuse conglomerate, averse only to activities about which it could not make useful predictions.

(2) Its top company would do almost all business through separately incorporated subsidiaries whose CEOs would operate with very extreme autonomy.

(3) There would be almost nothing at conglomerate headquarters except a tiny office suite containing a Chairman, a CFO, and a few assistants who mostly helped the CFO with auditing, internal control, etc.

(4) Berkshire subsidiaries would always prominently include casualty insurers. Those insurers as a group would be expected to produce, in due course, dependable underwriting gains while also producing substantial “float” (from unpaid insurance liabilities) for investment.

(5) There would be no significant system-wide personnel system, stock option system, other incentive system, retirement system, or the like, because the subsidiaries would have their own systems, often different.

(6) Berkshire’s Chairman would reserve only a few activities for himself. [ For a 'few activities' a rather long and remarkable list follows]

---------------

Why did Berkshire under Buffett do so well?

Only four large factors occur to me:

(1) The constructive peculiarities of Buffett,
(2) The constructive peculiarities of the Berkshire system,
(3) Good luck, and
(4) The weirdly intense, contagious devotion of some shareholders and other admirers, including some in the
press.

I believe all four factors were present and helpful. But the heavy freight was carried by the constructive peculiarities, the weird devotion, and their interactions.

P.S: Could not resist to post a picture of Berkshire's HQ team, which handles many key tasks of company currently Nr. 5 in US market cap with 'unbelievable efficiency' to quote Buffett.

To be true two could not make it, so it is not quite complete...

**Bill Moore** · 05-16-2015

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe

http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Contine.../dp/125003356X

This book certainly shattered the narrative I had regarding Western Europe after WWII. I was quite familiar with cases of retribution and starvation in the West, but not to the scale depicted in this very informative book. Actually the level of chaos and violence in Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of our invasions paled in comparison to the level of violence and chaos in many parts of Europe. High rates of starvation, continued genocide against the Jews (and other groups), U.S. abuse of German prisoners, millions of refugees that took years to resettle, etc.

The author uses numerous primary sources, and does a good job of citing known and suspected numbers (which often varied greatly), and why there is a discrepancy. While I suspect most serious readers of SWJ realize that high levels of savage violence are quite possible in so-called civilized western society, no reader will have any doubt that what we're seeing in Iraq is not unique to Islam. In Europe, in the aftermath of WWII, there were also beheadings, setting people on fire, intentional starvation, destruction of entire towns, etc. A good, even if unpleasant read.