Where Does Money Come From? The Giant Federal Reserve Scam That Most Americans Do Not Understand

How is money created?  If you ask average people on the street this question, most of them have absolutely no idea.  This is rather odd, because we all use money constantly.  You would think that it would only be natural for all of us to know where it comes from.  So where does money come from?  A lot of people assume that the federal government creates our money, but that is not the case.  If the federal government could just print and spend more money whenever it wanted to, our national debt would be zero.  But instead, our national debt is now nearly 16 trillion dollars.  So why does our government (or any sovereign government for that matter) have to borrow money from anybody?  That is a very good question.  The truth is that in theory the U.S. government does not have to borrow a single penny from anyone.  But under the Federal Reserve system, the U.S. government has purposely allowed itself to be subjugated to a financial system in which it will be constantly borrowing larger and larger amounts of money.  In fact, this is how it works in the vast majority of the countries on the planet at this point.  As you will see, this kind of system is not sustainable and the structural problems caused by such a system are at the very heart of our debt problems today.

So where does money come from?  In the United States, it comes from the Federal Reserve.

When the U.S. government decides that it wants to spend another billion dollars that it does not have, it does not print up a billion dollars.

Rather, the U.S. government creates a bunch of U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) and takes them over to the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve creates a billion dollars out of thin air and exchanges them for the U.S. Treasury bonds.

So why does the U.S. government go to all this trouble?  Why doesn't the U.S. government create the money itself?

Those are very good questions.

One of the primary reasons why our system is structured this way is so that wealthy people can get even wealthier by lending money to the U.S. government and other national governments.

For example, last year the U.S. government spent more than 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt.

Over the centuries, the ultra-wealthy have found lending to national governments to be a very, very profitable enterprise.

The U.S. Treasury bonds that the Federal Reserve receives in exchange for the money it has created out of nothing are auctioned off through the Federal Reserve system.

But wait.

There is a problem.

Because the U.S. government must pay interest on the Treasury bonds, the amount of debt that has been created by this transaction is greater than the amount of money that has been created.

So where will the U.S. government get the money to pay that debt?

Well, the theory is that we can get money to circulate through the economy really, really fast and tax it at a high enough rate that the government will be able to collect enough taxes to pay the debt.

But that never actually happens, does it?

And the creators of the Federal Reserve understood this as well.  They understood that the U.S. government would not have enough money to both run the government and service the national debt.  They knew that the U.S. government would have to keep borrowing even more money in an attempt to keep up with the game.

That is why I call the Federal Reserve a perpetual debt machine.  The Federal Reserve was created to trap the U.S. government in an endlessly expanding debt spiral from which there is no escape.

And the Federal Reserve is doing a great job at what it was designed to do.  Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.

Another way that money comes into existence in our economy is through the process of fractional reserve banking.

I originally pulled the following simplified explanation of fractional reserve banking off of the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but it has been pulled down since then.  But I still think it is helpful in understanding the basics of how fractional reserve banking works....

"If the reserve requirement is 10%, for example, a bank that receives a $100 deposit may lend out $90 of that deposit. If the borrower then writes a check to someone who deposits the $90, the bank receiving that deposit can lend out $81. As the process continues, the banking system can expand the initial deposit of $100 into a maximum of $1,000 of money ($100+$90+81+$72.90+...=$1,000)."

When you put your money into the bank, it does not say there.  The bank only keeps a relatively small amount of money sitting around to satisfy the withdrawal demands of account holders.  If all of us went down to the banks right now and demanded our money, that would create a major problem.

If I put 100 dollars into the bank and the bank lends out 90 of those dollars to you, now it looks like there are 190 dollars floating around.  I have "100 dollars" in my bank account and you have "90 dollars" that you just borrowed.

The new debt that you have taken on (90 dollars) has "created" more money.  But of course you are going to end up paying back more than 90 dollars to the bank, so more debt has been created than the amount of money that has been created.

And that is one of the big problems with our financial system.  It is designed so that the amount of debt and the amount of money are supposed to be perpetually expanding, and the amount of debt created is always greater than the amount of money that is created.

So is it any wonder that our society is swamped with nearly 55 trillion dollars of total debt at this point?

A debt-based financial system is unsustainable by nature because it will always create debt bubbles that will inevitably burst.

Are you starting to see why so many Americans are saying that we need to abolish the Federal Reserve system?

Our founding fathers never intended for our financial system to work this way.

According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is supposed to have the authority to "coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures".

So why has this authority been given to a private institution that is dominated by the big Wall Street banks and that has actually argued in court that it is "not an agency" of the federal government?

Thomas Jefferson once said that if he could add just one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a ban on all government borrowing....

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

But instead, we have become enslaved to a system where government borrowing actually creates our money.

The borrower is the servant of the lender, and we have allowed our government to enslave us to the tune of nearly 16 trillion dollars.

There are alternatives to this system.  Things do not have to work this way.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of our politicians consider the Federal Reserve to be good for America and steadfastly refuse to do anything to change the status quo.

So if you are waiting for "solutions" to these problems on the national level you are going to be waiting for a very long time.

The debt problems that the United States and Europe are experiencing did not come into existence by accident.  They are the result of fundamental structural problems with the financial system.

A debt-based financial system is always going to fail in the long run.  Unfortunately, most Americans still do not understand this and so we will all get to suffer the consequences.

Money: How to Get It and Keep It

By Doug Casey, Chairman, Casey Research

 

Even if you are already wealthy, some thought on this topic is worthwhile. What would you do if some act of God or of government, a catastrophic lawsuit, or a really serious misjudgment took you back to Square One? One thing about a real depression is that everybody loses. As Richard Russell has quipped, the winners are those who lose the least. As far as I'm concerned, the Greater Depression is looming, not just another cyclical downturn. You may find that although you're far ahead of your neighbors (you own precious metals, you've diversified internationally, and you don't believe much of what you hear from official sources), you're still not as prepared as you'd like.

 

I think a good plan would be to approach the problem in four steps: Liquidate, Consolidate, Create, and Speculate.

 

Step 1: Liquidate

 

Chances are high that you have too much "stuff." Your garage, basement, and attic are so full of possessions that you may be renting a storage unit for the overflow. That stuff is costing you money in storage fees, in depreciation, and in the weight of psychological baggage. It's limiting your options… It's weighing you down. Get rid of it.

 

Right now, it has a market value. Perhaps to a friend you can call. Or to a neighbor who might buy it if you have a yard sale. Or to some of the millions of people on eBay. A year from now, when we're out of the eye of the financial hurricane and back into the storm, it will likely have much less value. But right now, there's a market. Even if most people are no longer wearing those "He who dies with the most toys, wins" T-shirts that were popular at the height of the boom, there are still buyers. But the general standard of living is dropping, and mass psychology is changing. In a year or two, you may find there aren't any bids and the psychology of the country has changed radically. People will be desperate for cash, and they'll all be cleaning out their storage units (partly because they can't afford the rent on them).

 

Liquidate whatever you don't actually need – clothes, furniture, tools, cars, bikes, collections, electronics, properties, you-name-it. You'll be able to re-buy something like it, or better, cheaper. Just as important, you'll feel light and mobile. Unburdened by a bunch of possessions that own you and weigh you down. It will definitely improve your psychology, which is critical to the next stage. And the cash it generates will be helpful for the rest of the plan.

 

Step 2: Consolidate

 

Take stock of your assets. After Step 1, that should be a lot easier because you'll have less junk but a lot more cash. You'll already feel more in control and empowered. And definitely richer. But your main assets aren't money or things. It's the knowledge, skills, and connections you possess. Take stock of them. What do you know? What can you do? Whom do you know? Make lists and think about these things, with an eye to maximizing their value.

 

If you're light on knowledge, skills, and connections, then do something about it – although if you're reading this, you probably already live life in a way that builds all of those assets daily. But there's always room for improvement. Think the Count of Monte Cristo. Or if you're not so classically oriented, think Sarah Connor after she met the Terminator.

 

Part of this process is to look at what you're now doing. The chances are excellent there's a better and more profitable allocation of your time. Even successful rock stars tend to reinvent themselves every few years. You don't want to get stale. That leads to Step 3.

 

Step 3: Create

 

Remember, the essence of becoming wealthy is to produce more than you consume and save the difference. But it's hard to maximize value working for somebody else. And when you're given a job, it can be taken away for any number of reasons. There is cause, and there is effect. You don't want to be the effect of somebody else's cause. You want to be the cause for everything in your life. That implies working for yourself. At least turn your present employer into a partner or an associate.

 

Perhaps go through the Yellow Pages (while they still exist), page by page, line by line, and see what you can provide as a service for the businesses advertising there. I promise you, they're all looking for someone to come along, kiss their world, and make it better. Think like an entrepreneur at all times. Remember that there is an infinite desire for goods and services on the part of the 6 billion other people on the planet. Find out how you can give them what they want, and the money will roll in.

 

I've said many times that I believe you could airdrop me naked and penniless into the heart of the Congo, and by the time I emerged, I'd not just have survived, I'd come out wealthy. And believe me, I don't think wealth is by any means the most important thing in life; it's important but should be considered a convenience, not an imperative. Not that I'd want to be airdropped into the Congo at the moment; I've gotten a bit lazy, I have other interests, and you can't be everywhere and do everything.

 

But now that I think about it, if I wanted to make a real fortune today from a small base, I might prefer Africa to any other continent. As an educated Westerner, you can quickly meet anyone, on an equal level, much more easily than you could at home. If you have a reason that makes any sense at all, you can be in the office of the president within a week. These countries are all plagued with incompetence and corruption, they need everything, and they're full of untapped resources and talent. This all inures to the great advantage of a foreign entrepreneur.

 

Here's an idea. For your next vacation, book a trip to Cameroon, Togo, Gabon, Zimbabwe, or Angola. Go through the Yellow Pages in the capital and meet everybody who is anybody. The chances are good you'll come up with several deals in the first week alone. If you can't find the time, send your kid who's just out of school and idiotically thinks he may want to misallocate time and money getting an MBA. This idea alone should be worth a million dollars. Or as I would prefer to think of it, 700 ounces of gold.

 

But to an economist, money, like all goods, has "declining marginal utility." In other words, the more of something you have, the less you need or want the next unit. Of course, more is always better, but it's unseemly, even degrading, to pursue anything beyond a certain point.

 

When I was in Toronto a couple months ago, I spoke with a Chinese friend who, I believe, is worth at least $250 million. As he waxed philosophic, he allowed that he didn't feel he really needed more than 30 extra large to live exactly as he liked. I agreed, in that meals in the best restaurants, the finest clothes, cars, and houses only cost so much. And it's well within a conservative return on that capital, without ever even touching the principal. Is it worth it to get more? Perhaps not, unless your interests in the rest of life are entirely too narrow. The point of money is to allow you freedom, not make you crazy with getting more.

 

That doesn't rule out speculation as an avocation, however. More – everything else being equal – is still better.

 

Step 4: Speculate

 

You've got money. Now, you have to keep it and make it grow, because staying in the same place amounts to going backwards. That's partially because the world at large will continue getting wealthier, even as the dollars you own lose value.

 

In the past, I've discussed why a lot of old rules for success are actually going to prove counterproductive over the next few years. Saving with dollars will be foolish as they dry up and blow away. Investing according to classic rules will be very tricky in a radically changing economy. Most people will try to outrun inflation by trading or gambling. The markets, which are the natural friend of productive people, will perversely prove very destructive to them in the years to come. You'll know when the final bottom in the stock market has come: The average guy won't want to hear about the stock market, if he even remembers it exists. And if he does, he'll want it abolished.

 

Instead of becoming a victim of inflation and other politically caused distortions in the marketplace, you can profit from these things. Rational speculation is the optimum approach.

 

What to Do If You're Already Wealthy?

 

Perhaps, however, you've already covered all the financial bases to your satisfaction. Quo vadis? I have several thoughts on the meaning of wealth. You may find some of them of value as prices of everything fluctuate radically in the years ahead.

 

First, recognize that wealth is a high moral good. Don't feel guilty about having it or about wanting more.

 

If you've already accumulated and deployed enough capital to allow you to jump off the golden treadmill, congratulations: Chances are high that you are an exceptional human being. I say that because the moral value of being wealthy is underrated. I don't mean that in a Calvinistic way, in that Calvin believed Yahweh rewarded the righteous by making them rich. But I do believe that productive people – people who work hard to provide goods and services for others – definitely tend to be wealthier than unproductive people. They deserve to be. And since we don't live in a malevolent universe, people generally get what they deserve. So yes, wealth is definitely one indicator of moral excellence.

 

Sure, some wealthy people got that way by lying, cheating, and stealing. But they're exceptions. It's much easier to become wealthy if (in addition to having virtues like diligence, competence, and judgment) you are known to be truthful and honest. Those who automatically think ill of the rich are, at best, paranoid fools. Put it this way: Rich people may lack some virtues, but they definitely have at least a few that made them rich. Poor people, on the other hand, will certainly lack some virtues, and they'll definitely have some vices that kept them poor.

 

I'm a fan of some aspects of Gurdjieff, the late-19th to mid-20th century Russian mystic, who was also a merchant adventurer at some points in his colorful life. He said that anyone who successfully employed at least 20 other people must be considered at least partially enlightened and a type of guru. That viewpoint always resonated with me. Self-made wealthy people may not be saints or mystics or intellectuals or even especially thoughtful or moral. But they've proven they're better than the average bear in at least one important way: They can create and conserve wealth. And they've thereby eased everyone's path to further accomplishments.

 

Second, figure out your purpose in having money.

 

Sure, money makes life easier. And it's nice how it enables you to assist people you like with material things. But I strongly suggest that you not take too short a view on this matter. Accelerating advances in medical science are not only lengthening human life expectancy, but new developments now in the works have the potential to vastly improve your capability and health as well.

 

Is it possible to live to age 200, with all the wealth, knowledge, and wisdom that implies, while maintaining the body of a 30-year-old? Not yet. But the prospect is on the horizon. It will, however, be available only to those who can afford it. Ray Kurzweil makes a case that the Singularity is near, and I buy his reasoning. It would be tragic indeed if anyone frittered away his wealth, thinking he wouldn't live very long, and then succumbed to a self-fulfilling prophecy, not because of medical difficulties, but because of financial difficulties.

 

Third, don't give your money to charity.

 

Entirely apart from showing a lack of both imagination and foresight, it's a complete waste of good money, pure and simple. Contrary to popular opinion, it rarely does any good; it often does great harm. The whole concept of charitable giving is corrupt and desperately in need of a complete rethinking.

 

Fourth, if you do care about posterity (who knows, you might be reincarnated…), and on the chance you don't make it to the Singularity, carefully consider how to dispose of your estate.

 

For one thing, there's no reason to automatically leave anything to your children – unless they deserve it. The notion that someone should inherit just because he shares your genes is flawed and thoughtless. The example of Marcus Aurelius leaving the Roman Empire to his worthless son, Commodus, should be instructive. Wealth should be left to someone who is most capable of increasing it – at least if you want to benefit humanity in general. And yes, I'm quite aware that humanity in general may deserve absolutely nothing.

 

At a minimum, consider that memes are far more important than genes. It's wiser, therefore, to leave your wealth only to individuals (related to you or not) who will carry forth values you hold dear and are worthy of the wealth. If nothing else, make sure you disinherit the government.

 

Also consider that dividing wealth dissipates it and generally makes it less useful. If you have a $1 million, you could leave a $1,000 to each of 1,000 people. But apart from the fact that it's unlikely anyone knows a 1,000 worthy people, that much money is only enough for a modest vacation or a few baubles. The larger the pool of capital, the more ways it can be used, the more creative power it has, and the more likely it will be conserved and used creatively. I favor the Roman system, in which one could adopt children of any age – but always after you could see what their character was. You might want to do that if your own kids don't make the grade.

 

The Bottom Line

 

If you want serious money, you have to get serious about money. You need to understand these fundamentals and never forget them. Don't let all the garbage reported in the financial media you read, see or hear confuse you about what money really is. Don't consume more than you make: save! Don't spend: invest!

Spain in Denial (Quotes from Porter Stansberry)

"There is no financial crisis in Spain."

The above quote is from the chairman of a Spanish bank whose stock chart looks like this…

Emilio Botin, chairman of Spain's biggest bank, Banco Santander, today told Reuters his country is not suffering a financial crisis. Experience has taught us that when a financial executive (or government official) says there's no problem, there's a problem.
Of course, Botin revealed himself in his next breath… he told Reuters that Spanish banks need 40 billion euros to stay afloat, adding those figures are "perfectly accessible." We're sure the cost to bail out the Spanish banking system will be much larger than 40 billion euros. It likely will cost hundreds of billions of euros… But 40 billion is a good start.
While Botin is trying to calm fears… Spain's Treasury Minister Cristobal Montoro basically told the world, in an interview on Spanish radio, that his country is shut out of global credit markets… "The risk premium says Spain doesn't have the market door open" he said. "The risk premium says that as a state we have a problem in accessing markets, when we need to refinance our debt."
Spain is going to test the credit markets on Thursday by issuing 1 billion-2 billion euros of medium- and long-term debt. If we were the treasury minister of a country in crisis, we probably wouldn't be making announcements like this two days before an important bond auction…
With the imminent wave of liquidity about to hit Europe, it's no wonder global gold demand continues rising… Recent data show Hong Kong shipped 101,768 kilograms of gold to mainland China in April, up 62% in one month (and the second-highest monthly export in history). And Iran imported $1.2 billion of gold from Turkey in April (up from $7,500 a year earlier). In the U.S., sales of American Eagle gold coins more than doubled in May to 53,000 ounces, up from 20,000 in April.

Vix Analysis (quoted from Porter Stansberry)

The VIX serves as a sort of "fear gauge" for the stock market… The index measures the prices people are willing to pay for options that protect the value of their stock holdings. The higher the VIX, the more people will pay to insure their stocks… hence, the more scared they feel. And when investors and traders are scared, they also sell assets they deem risky… And as we know, when the herd is selling, bargains abound.

The chart below is a five-year chart of the S&P 500. Beneath that is a corresponding chart of the VIX for the same time period. As you can see… sharp rises in the VIX usually correspond with market bottoms. In September 2008, the market fell off a cliff. That's the month investment bank Lehman Brothers went bust. Investors were selling indiscriminately. The financial markets were panicked. The VIX, as you can see, quadrupled to 80.

Today, the market is scared… notably of a slowdown in China and a collapse in Europe. The S&P 500 has sold off 10% from its 2012 high in April. And the VIX has increased from around 15 then to above 27 yesterday. We're far from extreme panic of late 2008.

Commodity Prices - Coal in Declining Trend

The worries of a global slowdown pushed oil prices to less than $82 a barrel today... highlighting Porter's outlook of lower oil prices and higher natural gas prices. A global slowdown plays into Porter's belief... But he's more focused on the huge shift in the energy markets that's being driven by the incredible amount of oil being found in the United States. (For example, the oilfield we learned about at the Atlas meeting could be the second-biggest in U.S. history.)

Falling oil and low natural gas prices have destroyed the coal market... Coal – which fuels roughly half the electricity generated in the U.S. – competes directly with natural gas in the power market. But coal is much dirtier than clean-burning natural gas (which makes it unpopular with politicians). So with natural gas prices near record lows, the market is avoiding coal. You can see the result in the following chart of Peabody Coal (BTU)... the largest U.S. coal miner by volume...

 

Facebook Stumbles On IPO... Is It A Buy? by Robert Morris

The Facebook (FB) IPO was hailed as one of the greatest investment opportunities in stock market history.  But in the end, it can be summed up with just one word... 

ANTI-CLIMACTIC!

Investors had been anticipating for months that Facebook would soar on the IPO.  With nearly one billion users worldwide, Facebook is the 900 pound gorilla in the hugely popular social media business.  And most experts are projecting strong growth ahead for the company.

 

Nevertheless, the heavily hyped IPO fell flat on its, well... face.

The social media giant ended its first day of trading just 23 cents above the IPO price.  That translates to an opening day profit of less than 1%!

Clearly, not the huge first day gain most investors were expecting.

What's more, the stock's plunging further in early morning trade.  As I write, FB is down more than 12% at just over $33 per share.  And it's trading at a 13% discount to the IPO price.

 

Now, I must admit I'm not all that surprised by Facebook's cool market reception.

You may recall I was one of the few market analysts who predicted Facebook's IPO would fail to live up to the hype.  And in my article, Three Reasons Why I'm Not Buying The Facebook IPO, I urged my readers to avoid buying FB on the IPO.

However, with the share price dropping, many investors are starting to wonder if FB is now a good buy.

 

The short answer... Not yet!

Even at $33 per share, Facebook is still way overvalued in my humble opinion.  At that price, the stock is trading at a lofty 79x trailing twelve months' earnings.

Just how high is this multiple?

Try this on for size.  FB's PE ratio is more than 4x greater than Google's (GOOG).  And it's over 6x larger than Apple's (AAPL).

We haven't seen a valuation this high in the stratosphere since the dot com bubble of the late 1990s.

 

And given the company's recent struggles, it's hard to justify why FB deserves a higher PE than GOOG or AAPL.

Just last month, Facebook reported a weaker than expected first quarter.  Both revenue and earnings declined from the fourth quarter of 2012.  And to make matters worse, the drop was due to a downturn in the company's core business... internet advertising.

This is a big concern going forward.

In addition, the company now faces a potentially huge legal battle over the privacy rights of its users.

Shortly after the IPO, the company was sued by a group of current Facebook users.  The suit claims Facebook invaded users' privacy by tracking their internet usage.

Plaintiffs are seeking money damages to the tune of $15 billion.

This lawsuit is certain to be a major distraction for a management team just now making the difficult transition from private to public company. And if Facebook loses the suit, they may have to pay a fortune in money damages.

In fact, Facebook could end up paying out nearly every penny raised in the IPO.

 

Bottom line...

Even with the recent drop in price, Facebook shares are still highly overvalued.  Investors would be well served to let these shares fall to a more reasonable level before hitting the buy button.

Profitably Yours,

Robert Morris

THE SUPERINVESTORS OF GRAHAM-AND-DODDSVILLE

By Warren Buffett

Is the Graham and Dodd "look for values with a significant margin of safety relative to prices" approach to security analysis out of date? Many of the professors who write textbooks today say yes. They argue that the stock market is efficient; that is, that stock prices reflect everything that is known about a company's prospects and about the state of the economy. There are no undervalued stocks, these theorists argue, because there are smart security analysts who utilize all available information to ensure unfailingly appropriate prices. Investors who seem to beat the market year after year are just lucky. "If prices fully reflect available information, this sort of investment adeptness is ruled out," writes one of today's textbook authors.  Well, maybe. But I want to present to you a group of investors who have, year in and year out, beaten the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index. The hypothesis that they do this by pure chance is at least worth examining. Crucial to this examination is the fact that these winners were all well known to me and pre-identified as superior investors, the most recent identification occurring over fifteen years ago. Absent this condition - that is, if I had just recently searched among thousands of records to select a few names for you this morning -- I would advise you to stop reading right here. I should add that all of these records have been audited. And I should further add that I have known many of those who have invested with these managers, and the checks received by those participants over the years have matched the stated records. Before we begin this examination, I would like you to imagine a national coin-flipping contest. Let's assume we get 225 million Americans up tomorrow morning and we ask them all to wager a dollar. They go out in the morning at sunrise, and they all call the flip of a coin. If they call correctly, they win a dollar from those who called wrong. Each day the losers drop out, and on the subsequent day the stakes build as all previous winnings are put on the line. After ten flips on ten mornings, there will be approximately 220,000 people in the United States who have correctly called ten flips in a row. They each will have won a little over $1,000.  Now this group will probably start getting a little puffed up about this, human nature being what it is. They may try to be modest, but at cocktail parties they will occasionally admit to attractive members of the opposite sex what their technique is, and what marvelous insights they bring to the field of flipping. Assuming that the winners are getting the appropriate rewards from the losers, in another ten days we will have 215 people who have successfully called their coin flips 20 times in a row and who, by this exercise, each have turned one dollar into a little over $1 million. $225 million would have been lost, $225 million would have been won. By then, this group will really lose their heads. They will probably write books on "How I turned a Dollar into a Million in Twenty Days Working Thirty Seconds a Morning." Worse yet, they'll probably start jetting around the country attending seminars on efficient coin-flipping and tackling skeptical professors with, " If it can't be done, why are there 215 of us?" By then some business school professor will probably be rude enough to bring up the fact that if 225 million orangutans had engaged in a similar exercise, the results would be much the same - 215 egotistical orangutans with 20 straight winning flips. I would argue, however, that there are some important differences in the examples I am going to present. For one thing, if (a) you had taken 225 million orangutans distributed roughly as the U.S. population is; if (b) 215 winners were left after 20 days; and if (c) you found that 40 came from a particular zoo in Omaha, you would be pretty sure you were on to something. So you would probably go out and ask the zookeeper about what he's feeding them, whether they had special exercises, what books they read, and who knows what else. That is, if you found any really extraordinary concentrations of success, you might want to see if you could identify concentrations of unusual characteristics that might be causal factors. Scientific inquiry naturally follows such a pattern. If you were trying to analyze possible causes of a rare type of cancer -- with, say, 1,500 cases a year in the United States -- and you found that 400 of them occurred in some little mining town in Montana, you would get very interested in the water there, or the occupation of those afflicted, or other variables. You know it's not random chance that 400 come from a small area. You would not necessarily know the causal factors, but you would know where to search. I submit to you that there are ways of defining an origin other than geography. In addition to geographical origins, there can be what I call an intellectual origin. I think you will find that a disproportionate number of successful coin-flippers in the investment world came from a very small intellectual village that could be called Graham-and-Doddsville. A concentration of winners that simply cannot be explained by chance can be traced to this particular intellectual village. Conditions could exist that would make even that concentration unimportant. Perhaps 100 people were simply imitating the coin-flipping call of some terribly persuasive personality. When he called heads, 100 followers automatically called that coin the same way. If the leader was part of the 215 left at the end, the fact that 100 came from the same intellectual origin would mean nothing. You would simply be identifying one case as a hundred cases. Similarly, let's assume that you lived in a strongly patriarchal society and every family in the United States conveniently consisted of ten members. Further assume that the patriarchal culture was so strong that, when the 225 million people went out the first day, every member of the family identified with the father's call. Now, at the end of the 20-day period, you would have 215 winners, and you would find that they came from only 21.5 families. Some naive types might say that this indicates an enormous hereditary factor as an explanation of successful coin-flipping. But, of course, it would have no significance at all because it would simply mean that you didn't have 215 individual winners, but rather 21.5 randomly distributed families who were winners. In this group of successful investors that I want to consider, there has been a common intellectual patriarch, Ben Graham. But the children who left the house of this intellectual patriarch have called their "flips" in very different ways. They have gone to different places and bought and sold different stocks and companies, yet they have had a combined record that simply cannot be explained by the fact that they are all calling flips identically because a leader is signaling the calls for them to make. The patriarch has merely set forth the intellectual theory for making coin-calling decisions, but each student has decided on his own manner of applying the theory. The common intellectual theme of the investors from Graham-and-Doddsville is this: they search for discrepancies between the value of a business and the price of small pieces of that business in the market. Essentially, they exploit those discrepancies without the efficient market theorist's concern as to whether the stocks are bought on Monday or Thursday, or whether it is January or July, etc. Incidentally, when businessmen buy businesses, which is just what our Graham & Dodd investors are doing through the purchase of marketable stocks -- I doubt that many are cranking into their purchase decision the day of the week or the month in which the transaction is going to occur. If it doesn't make any difference whether all of a business is being bought on a Monday or a Friday, I am baffled why academicians invest extensive time and effort to see whether it makes a difference when buying small pieces of those same businesses. Our Graham & Dodd investors, needless to say, do not discuss beta, the capital asset pricing model, or covariance in returns among securities. These are not subjects of any interest to them. In fact, most of them would have difficulty defining those terms. The investors simply focus on two variables: price and value. I always find it extraordinary that so many studies are made of price and volume behavior, the stuff of chartists. Can you imagine buying an entire business simply because the price of the business had been marked up substantially last week and the week before? Of course, the reason a lot of studies are made of these price and volume variables is that now, in the age of computers, there are almost endless data available about them. It isn't necessarily because such studies have any utility; it's simply that the data are there and academicians have [worked] hard to learn the mathematical skills needed to manipulate them. Once these skills are acquired, it seems sinful not to use them, even if the usage has no utility or negative utility. As a friend said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I think the group that we have identified by a common intellectual home is worthy of study. Incidentally, despite all the academic studies of the influence of such variables as price, volume, seasonality, capitalization size, etc., upon stock performance, no interest has been evidenced in studying the methods of this unusual concentration of value-oriented winners. I begin this study of results by going back to a group of four of us who worked at Graham-Newman Corporation from 1954 through 1956. There were only four -- I have not selected these names from among thousands. I offered to go to work at Graham-Newman for nothing after  I took Ben Graham's class, but he turned me down as overvalued. He took this value stuff very seriously! After much pestering he finally hired me. There were three partners and four of us as the "peasant" level. All four left between 1955 and 1957 when the firm was wound up, and it's possible to trace the record of three. The first example (see Table 1) is that of Walter Schloss. Walter never went to college, but took a course from Ben Graham at night at the New York Institute of Finance. Walter left Graham-Newman in 1955 and achieved the record shown here over 28 years. Here is what "Adam Smith" -- after I told him about Walter -- wrote about him in Supermoney (1972): He has no connections or access to useful information. Practically no one in Wall Street knows him and he is not fed any ideas. He looks up the numbers in the manuals and sends for the annual reports, and that's about it. In introducing me to (Schloss) Warren had also, to my mind, described himself. "He never forgets that he is handling other people's money, and this reinforces his normal strong aversion to loss." He has total integrity and a realistic picture of himself. Money is real to him and stocks are real -- and from this flows an attraction to the "margin of safety" principle. Walter has diversified enormously, owning well over 100 stocks currently. He knows how to identify securities that sell at considerably less than their value to a private owner. And that's all he does. He doesn't worry about whether it it's January, he doesn't worry about whether it's Monday, he doesn't worry about whether it's an election year. He simply says, if a business is worth a dollar and I can buy it for 40 cents, something good may happen to me. And he does it over and over and over again. He owns many more stocks than I do -- and is far less interested in the underlying nature of the business; I don't seem to have very much influence on Walter. That's one of his strengths; no one has much influence on him. The second case is Tom Knapp, who also worked at Graham-Newman with me. Tom was a chemistry major at Princeton before the war; when he came back from the war, he was a beach bum. And then one day he read that Dave Dodd was giving a night course in investments at Columbia. Tom took it on a noncredit basis, and he got so interested in the subject from taking that course that he came up and enrolled at Columbia Business School, where he got the MBA degree. He took Dodd's course again, and took Ben Graham's course. Incidentally, 35 years later I called Tom to ascertain some of the facts involved here and I found him on the beach again. The only difference is that now he owns the beach! In 1968, Tom Knapp and Ed Anderson, also a Graham disciple, along with one or two other fellows of similar persuasion, formed Tweedy, Browne Partners, and their investment results appear in Table 2. Tweedy, Browne built that record with very wide diversification. They occasionally bought control of businesses, but the record of the passive investments is equal to the record of the control investments. Table 3 describes the third member of the group who formed Buffett Partnership in 1957. The best thing he did was to quit in 1969. Since then, in a sense, Berkshire Hathaway has been a continuation of the partnership in some respects. There is no single index I can give you that I would feel would be a fair test of investment management at Berkshire. But I think that any way you figure it, it has been satisfactory. Table 4 shows the record of the Sequoia Fund, which is managed by a man whom I met in 1951 in Ben Graham's class, Bill Ruane. After getting out of Harvard Business School, he went to Wall Street. Then he realized that he needed to get a real business education so he came up to take Ben's course at Columbia, where we met in early 1951. Bill's record from 1951 to 1970, working with relatively small sums, was far better than average. When I wound up Buffett Partnership I asked Bill if he would set up a fund to handle all our partners, so he set up the Sequoia Fund. He set it up at a terrible time, just when I was quitting. He went right into the two-tier market and all the difficulties that made for comparative performance for value-oriented investors. I am happy to say that my partners, to an amazing degree, not only stayed with him but added money, with the happy result shown here. There's no hindsight involved here. Bill was the only person I recommended to my partners, and I said at the time that if he achieved a four-point-per-annum advantage over the Standard & Poor's, that would be solid performance. Bill has achieved well over that, working with progressively larger sums of money. That makes things much more difficult. Size is the anchor of performance. There is no question about it. It doesn't mean you can't do better than average when you get larger, but the margin shrinks. And if you ever get so you're managing two trillion dollars, and that happens to be the amount of the total equity valuation in the economy, don't think that you'll do better than average! I should add that in the records we've looked at so far, throughout this whole period there was practically no duplication in these portfolios. These are men who select securities based on discrepancies between price and value, but they make their selections very differently. Walter's largest holdings have been such stalwarts as Hudson Pulp & Paper and Jeddo Highland Coal and New York Trap Rock Company and all those other names that come instantly to mind to even a casual reader of the business pages. Tweedy Browne's selections have sunk even well below that level in terms of name recognition. On the other hand, Bill has worked with big companies. The overlap among these portfolios has been very, very low. These records do not reflect one guy calling the flip and fifty people yelling out the same thing after him. Table 5 is the record of a friend of mine who is a Harvard Law graduate, who set up a major law firm. I ran into him in about 1960 and told him that law was fine as a hobby but he could do better. He set up a partnership quite the opposite of Walter's. His portfolio was concentrated in very few securities and therefore his record was much more volatile but it was based on the same discount-from-value approach. He was willing to accept greater peaks and valleys of performance, and he happens to be a fellow whose whole psyche goes toward concentration, with the results shown. Incidentally, this record belongs to Charlie Munger, my partner for a long time in the operation of Berkshire Hathaway. When he ran his partnership, however, his portfolio holdings were almost completely different from mine and the other fellows mentioned earlier. Table 6 is the record of a fellow who was a pal of Charlie Munger's -- another non-business school type -- who was a math major at USC. He went to work for IBM after graduation and was an IBM salesman for a while. After I got to Charlie, Charlie got to him. This happens to be the record of Rick Guerin. Rick, from 1965 to 1983, against a compounded gain of 316 percent for the S&P, came off with 22,200 percent, which probably because he lacks a business school education, he regards as statistically significant. One sidelight here: it is extraordinary to me that the idea of buying dollar bills for 40 cents takes immediately to people or it doesn't take at all. It's like an inoculation. If it doesn't grab a person right away, I find that you can talk to him for years and show him records, and it doesn't make any difference. They just don't seem able to grasp the concept, simple as it is. A fellow like Rick Guerin, who had no formal education in business, understands immediately the value approach to investing and he's applying it five minutes later. I've never seen anyone who became a gradual convert over a ten-year period to this approach. It doesn't seem to be a matter of IQ or academic training. It's instant recognition, or it is nothing. Table 7 is the record of Stan Perlmeter. Stan was a liberal arts major at the University of Michigan who was a partner in the advertising agency of Bozell & Jacobs. We happened to be in the same building in Omaha. In 1965 he figured out I had a better business than he did, so he left advertising. Again, it took five minutes for Stan to embrace the value approach. Perlmeter does not own what Walter Schloss owns. He does not own what Bill Ruane owns. These are records made independently. But every time Perlmeter buys a stock it's because he's getting more for his money than he's paying. That's the only thing he's thinking about. He's not looking at quarterly earnings projections, he's not looking at next year's earnings, he's not thinking about what day of the week it is, he doesn't care what investment research from any place says, he's not interested in price momentum, volume, or anything. He's simply asking: what is the business worth? Table 8 and Table 9 are the records of two pension funds I've been involved in. They are not selected from dozens of pension funds with which I have had involvement; they are the only two I have influenced. In both cases I have steered them toward value-oriented managers. Very, very few pension funds are managed from a value standpoint. Table 8 is the Washington Post Company's Pension Fund. It was with a large bank some years ago, and I suggested that they would do well to select managers who had a value orientation. As you can see, overall they have been in the top percentile ever since they made the change. The Post told the managers to keep at least 25 percent of these funds in bonds, which would not have been necessarily the choice of these managers. So I've included the bond performance simply to illustrate that this group has no particular expertise about bonds. They wouldn't have said they did. Even with this drag of 25 percent of their fund in an area that was not their game, they were in the top percentile of fund management. The Washington Post experience does not cover a terribly long period but it does represent many investment decisions by three managers who were not identified retroactively. Table 9 is the record of the FMC Corporation fund. I don't manage a dime of it myself but I did, in 1974, influence their decision to select value-oriented managers. Prior to that time they had selected managers much the same way as most larger companies. They now rank number one in the Becker survey of pension funds for their size over the period of time subsequent to this "conversion" to the value approach. Last year they had eight equity managers of any duration beyond a year. Seven of them had a cumulative record better than the S&P. The net difference now between a median performance and the actual performance of the FMC fund over this period is $243 million. FMC attributes this to the mindset given to them about the selection of managers. Those managers are not the managers I would necessarily select but they have the common denominators of selecting securities based on value. So these are nine records of "coin-flippers" from Graham-and-Doddsville. I haven't selected them with hindsight from among thousands. It's not like I am reciting to you the names of a bunch of lottery winners -- people I had never heard of before they won the lottery. I selected these men years ago based upon their framework for investment decision-making. I knew what they had been taught and additionally I had some personal knowledge of their intellect, character, and temperament. It's very important to understand that this group has assumed far less risk than average; note their record in years when the general market was weak. While they differ greatly in style, these investors are, mentally, always buying the business, not buying the stock. A few of them sometimes buy whole businesses. Far more often they simply buy small pieces of businesses. Their attitude, whether buying all or a tiny piece of a business, is the same. Some of them hold portfolios with dozens of stocks; others concentrate on a handful. But all exploit the difference between the market price of a business and its intrinsic value. I'm convinced that there is much inefficiency in the market. These Graham-and-Doddsville investors have successfully exploited gaps between price and value. When the price of a stock can be influenced by a "herd" on Wall Street with prices set at the margin by the most emotional person, or the greediest person, or the most depressed person, it is hard to argue that the market always prices rationally. In fact, market prices are frequently nonsensical. I would like to say one important thing about risk and reward. Sometimes risk and reward are correlated in a positive fashion. If someone were to say to me, "I have here a six-shooter and I have slipped one cartridge into it. Why don't you just spin it and pull it once? If you survive, I will give you $1 million." I would decline -- perhaps stating that $1 million is not enough. Then he might offer me $5 million to pull the trigger twice -- now that would be a positive correlation between risk and reward! The exact opposite is true with value investing. If you buy a dollar bill for 60 cents, it's riskier than if you buy a dollar bill for 40 cents, but the expectation of reward is greater in the latter case. The greater the potential for reward in the value portfolio, the less risk there is. One quick example: The Washington Post Company in 1973 was selling for $80 million in the market. At the time, that day, you could have sold the assets to any one of ten buyers for not less than $400 million, probably appreciably more. The company owned the Post, Newsweek, plus several television stations in major markets. Those same properties are worth $2 billion now, so the person who would have paid $400 million would not have been crazy. Now, if the stock had declined even further to a price that made the valuation $40 million instead of $80 million, its beta would have been greater. And to people that think beta measures risk, the cheaper price would have made it look riskier. This is truly Alice in Wonderland. I have never been able to figure out why it's riskier to buy $400 million worth of properties for $40 million than $80 million. And, as a matter of fact, if you buy a group of such securities and you know anything at all about business valuation, there is essentially no risk in buying $400 million for $80 million, particularly if you do it by buying ten $40 million piles of $8 million each. Since you don't have your hands on the $400 million, you want to be sure you are in with honest and reasonably competent people, but that's not a difficult job. You also have to have the knowledge to enable you to make a very general estimate about the value of the underlying businesses. But you do not cut it close. That is what Ben Graham meant by having a margin of safety. You don't try and buy businesses worth $83 million for $80 million. You leave yourself an enormous margin. When you build a bridge, you insist it can carry 30,000 pounds, but you only drive 10,000 pound trucks across it. And that same principle works in investing. In conclusion, some of the more commercially minded among you may wonder why I am writing this article. Adding many converts to the value approach will perforce narrow the spreads between price and value. I can only tell you that the secret has been out for 50 years, ever since Ben Graham and Dave Dodd wrote Security Analysis, yet I have seen no trend toward value investing in the 35 years that I've practiced it. There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. The academic world, if anything, has actually backed away from the teaching of value investing over the last 30 years. It's likely to continue that way. Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace, and those who read their Graham & Dodd will continue to prosper. If you have a high-speed internet connection, you may prefer to go to the web address below of the speech (a 1.6 MB .pdf file), which has all of the tables. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/superinvestors.pdf