For Buffett, the Long Run Still Trumps the Quick Return – NYTimes.com

He is the master of his domain–and he doesn’t like the short term (or shorting) that he sees in trading today.

Mr. Buffett, 82, is famous for investing in companies that he sees as solid operations and essential to the economy, like railroads, utilities and financial companies, and holds his stakes for the long run. The argument that the markets are better off today because of the enormous amount of liquidity in the stock market, a function of quick flipping and electronic trading, is a fallacy, he said.

“You can’t buy 10 percent of the farmland in Nebraska in three years if you set out to do it,” he said. Yet, he pointed out, he was able to buy the equivalent of 10 percent of I.B.M. in six to eight months as a result of the market’s liquidity. “The idea that people look at their holdings in such a way that that kind of volume exists means that to a great extent, it’s a casino game,” he said. Of course, unlike many investors, he plans to hold his stake in I.B.M. for years.

via For Buffett, the Long Run Still Trumps the Quick Return – NYTimes.com.

Syrian Government Beset by Battles and Diplomatic Setbacks – NYTimes.com

Perhaps another way to view Syria is not simply as a two-sided contest.  From the inside, Assad is acting rationally within the options he has been given–and inside a regime that from the beginning appears to have chosen a death struggle over any negotiation.

A Russian political analyst with contacts at the Foreign Ministry said that “people sent by the Russian leadership” who had contact with Mr. Assad two weeks ago described a man who has lost all hope of victory or escape.

“His mood is that he will be killed anyway,” Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of a Russian foreign affairs journal and the head of an influential policy group, said in an interview in Moscow, adding that only an “extremely bold” diplomatic proposal could possibly convince Mr. Assad that he could leave power and survive.

“If he will try to go, to leave, to exit, he will be killed by his own people,” Mr. Lukyanov said, speculating that security forces dominated by Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect would not let him depart and leave them to face revenge. “If he stays, he will be killed by his opponents. He is in a trap. It is not about Russia or anybody else. It is about his physical survival.”

via Syrian Government Beset by Battles and Diplomatic Setbacks – NYTimes.com.