TWU Local 556 President on Southwest's canceled flights
The above is an NPR interview. There’s a written transcript of the full interview. But also, at the top, there’s a link to the (6 minute) audio version, which I found more compelling.
Once upon a time (80s and 90s) this was a great little airline for some of us living in downstate Michigan (and I presume elsewhere). Low cost, easy to deal with, very consumer friendly - including no-cost (or very low cost) schedule changes. Their “on-time” was as good as or better than the majors. I never cared for their “stampede” boarding method in which all lined up and then dashed aboard to grab the best seat they could. But to the airline it was a time saver. And one did tend to have an extra connection when flying any distance - for example, from Detroit to Florida. But all in all it was a fine operation.
What happened? Dunno. But their once warm labor relations have turned decidedly cold in recent years. Chill may be evident in my linked interview. And their sole reliance on the 737, for many years a strength, may have turned against them in a number of ways.

I have to believe this affects its stock too.

LUV: Down 6% today. Down 23% YTD according to Google
Airlines are fun to fly on (usually), but I wouldn’t want to own stock in one.

Re: TSLA
YTD -72.7%
1 Month -40.36%
Today -11.41%
(Numbers from Google)
ISTM @Sven ‘s original question has been largely answered. Your exposure to TSLA has now been diminished whether you did anything or not.
Began tracking TSLA a week or so ago. Some astounding daily losses over that time. ISTM there’s some valuable lessons here for investors, as the stock seemed like a “sure bet” that just kept going up for many years. A look at what can go wrong with an investment and how quickly the tables can turn. Perhaps some needed humility.

But it seems to me that the US needs to intensively examine what critical resources we are presently importing from potential enemies (ie: precursor drug ingredients) that could also be manufactured or sourced here, or from a friendly alternate backup location.
Again, an observation that comes laden with a lot of issues.
Precursor? I'm guessing you are referring to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).
Critical? An input ("precursor") to something downstream (final product) would seem to be critical only if at least one of its final product were critical. As an example of a final, non-critical product, it is hard to think of Zantac (old formulation) as a critical drug.
Friendly? If a nation is a potential enemy but is currently friendly, what then? Is India friendly? Can't help but think of Tom Leher's line from Who's Next in the early 1960s about France: "they're on our side, I believe". (For context: "Franco–American antagonism of the 1960s ... culminated with France's partial withdrawal from NATO in 1966")

On a nation by nation basis, India supplies about half of all APIs. (I believe this pie chart represents unweighted percentages of all APIs, not weighted by volume produced.) Of course this doesn't mean that for any given API there is any source outside of China.
Another graphic can be found here (use arrows to move to slide 2). I believe this represents percentages by amounts produced ("global market share"); China is at 40%, India at 20%, US at 10%.

Source: https://qualitymatters.usp.org/geographic-concentration-pharmaceutical-manufacturing
From your description of the precursor risk, I'm guessing that you're talking about active ingredients tainted with nitrosamines.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-17/a-threat-of-contaminated-drugs-persists-four-years-later
Here's a good, short piece, admittedly commentary, from Science:
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sartan-contamination-story
The writer reports that a related contaminant was found in a drug using an API manufactured by a company in India. (See also here.) He goes on to speculate that based on the chemistry, it looks like the industry changed its process for producing these APIs around 2012. Thus, there was a problem that wasn't caught for years, and to address your point, sourcing domestically wouldn't have changed anything.
I may have less faith in the FDA than you. The FDA is the organization keeping us safe from Canadian certified drugs. Did you know that if you want to mail order drugs from Canada you have to use Amex because the government has pressured MC and VISA to refuse to process these sales?

In March [2004], Visa and MasterCard announced that they will not service Canadian mail order pharmacies because they have been under pressure from the FDA to cease their support of payment processing. They cited pressure from the FDA and have warned their member financial institutions to avoid so-called ``illegal'' transactions.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-108shrg93889/html/CHRG-108shrg93889.htm

Good quote. We’ve all heard many of his others: Like “Rule #1 - Don’t lose money … Rule #2 - Never forget rule #1.”
Elsewhere he’s said you shouldn’t buy anything you’re not comfortable holding for 10 years. It strikes me that one’s a bit problematic for some of us post-75. But if it was a guaranteed way to prolong one’s life for 10 more years, I’d buy a bunch of whatever it was.
Volatility in a particular holding is fine with me. Have a couple mining stocks that bounce up and down by 5-8% on an almost weekly basis - sometimes that much in a single day. But if your entire portfolio were moving by that amount, and if you were taking distributions to live on from those investments (not some cash reserve), it might drive you nuts.
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FWIW - Here’s a 60-second video of a much younger Buffett summarizing his views on investing. Some might be interested ….

I like Levitz but am not persuaded
did not follow crash's anecdata at all
here is PK today:
The average national price of regular gasoline this Christmas was almost 20 cents a gallon lower than it was a year earlier. Prices at the pump are still higher than they were during the pandemic slump, when economic shutdowns depressed world oil prices, but the affordability of fuel — as measured by the ratio of the average wage to gas prices — is most of the way back to pre-Covid levels.
Now, gas prices aren’t a good measure either of economic health or of successful economic policy — although if you listened to Republican ads during the midterms, you might have thought otherwise. But subsiding prices at the pump are only one of many indicators that the inflationary storm of 2021 to ’22 is letting up. Remember the supply-chain crisis, with shipping rates soaring to many times their normal level? It’s over.
More broadly, recent reports on the inflation measures the Federal Reserve traditionally uses to guide its interest rate policy have been really, really good.
So is this going to be the winter of our diminishing discontent?
After the nasty shocks of the past two years, nobody wants to get too excited by positive news. Having greatly underestimated past inflation risks myself, I’m working hard on curbing my enthusiasm, and the Fed, which is worried about its credibility, is even more inclined to look for clouds in the silver lining. And those clouds are there, as I’ll explain in a minute. It’s much too soon to declare all clear on the inflation front.
But there has been a big role reversal in the inflation debate. Last year optimists like me were trying to explain away the bad news. Now pessimists are trying to explain away the good news.
What’s really striking about the improvement in inflation numbers is that so far, at least, it hasn’t followed the pessimists’ script. Disinflation, many commentators insisted, would require a sustained period of high unemployment — say, at least a 5 percent unemployment rate for five years. And to be fair, this prediction could still be vindicated if recent progress against inflation turns out to be a false dawn. However, inflation has declined rapidly, even with unemployment still near record lows.
What explains falling inflation? It now looks as if much, although not all, of the big inflation surge reflected one-time events associated with the pandemic and its aftermath — which was what Team Transitory (including me) claimed all along, except that transitory effects were both bigger and longer lasting than any of us imagined.
First came those supply chain issues. As consumers, fearing risks of infection, avoided in-person services — such as dining out — and purchased physical goods instead, the world faced a sudden shortage of shipping containers, port capacity and more. Prices of many goods soared as the logistics of globalization proved less robust and flexible than we realized.
Then came a surge in demand for housing, probably caused largely by the pandemic-driven rise in remote work. The result was a spike in rental rates. Since official statistics use market rents to estimate the overall cost of shelter and shelter, in turn, is a large part of measured inflation, this sent inflation higher even as supply-chain problems eased.
But new data from the Cleveland Fed confirms what private firms have been telling us for several months: Rapid rent increases for new tenants have stopped, and rents may well be falling. Because most renters are on one-year leases, official measures of housing costs — and overall inflation numbers that fail to account for the lag — don’t yet reflect this slowdown. But housing has gone from a major driver of inflation to a stabilizing force.
So why shouldn’t we be celebrating? You can pick over the entrails of the inflation numbers looking for bad omens, but I’m ever less convinced that anybody, myself included, understands inflation well enough to do this in a useful way. Basically, as you exclude more and more items from your measure in search of “underlying” inflation, what you’re left with becomes increasingly strange and unreliable.
Instead, my concern (and, I believe, the Fed’s) comes down to the fact that the job market still looks very hot, with wages rising too fast to be consistent with acceptably low inflation.
What I would point out, however, is that many workers’ salaries are like apartment rents, in the sense that they get reset only once a year, so official numbers on wages will lag a cooling market, and there is some evidence that labor markets are, in fact, cooling. Official reports in January — especially on job openings early in the month and on employment costs at the end — may (or may not) give us more clarity on whether this cooling is real or sufficient.
Oh, and with visible inflation slowing, the risks of a wage-price spiral, which I never thought were very large, are receding even further.
So we’ve had some seriously encouraging inflation news. There are still reasons to worry, and the news isn’t solid enough to justify breaking out the Champagne. But given the season, I am going to indulge at least in a glass or two of eggnog.

This is Ireland's national State/savings bond program. See Table 1 under each category. So, 10% for 10 years means euro 1,000 principal bond will mature to euro 1,100. TR is cumulative (typical default), not annualized. There is some bonus too, but I didn't spend more time on details.
US I-Bonds or 5-yr TIPS (held to maturity) are MUCH better, so are the US T-Bills/Notes.

@orage thanks! it appears that it might not be worth my time, then. 10 years is a long time to lock-up money. And if it's not compounding, then this seems to me like a shameless come-on.

Perhaps I misunderstand, as it seems odd to advertise such low returns these days. And the "cumulative bonus percentage" matches what appears to be the total return; nothing seems to be a "bonus". But an "Annual Equivalent Rate" of 0.96% sure seems like 10% total over 10 years, since (1.0096)^10 is 1.10. And the AER if redeemed early is pitiful.

@Crash The table on page 2 of your second link shows this is 10% total (not per year) over 10 years, increasing very slowly to 10% total over that period.

Some of you might recall me mentioning that I have citizenship in Ireland as well as the USA. So a 10% tax-free return interests me! I've sent an inquiry to them by email about eligibility, since I do not reside in Ireland. The term is 10 years on this one. I expect it will compound through the years. The "AER" (Annual Equivalent Rate) = 0.96%.
Links:
https://www.statesavings.ie/media/pdf/nsb-general-terms-conditions.pdf
https://www.statesavings.ie/media/pdf/ss-brochure-4_10yr.pdf
https://www.statesavings.ie/our-products/10-year-national-solidarity-bond
https://www.statesavings.ie/about-state-savings
Just thought I'd share, in case anyone else can find a way to get your foot in the door. I've already received an auto-reply from them by email. After the holiday, I'll hear back from someone over there.

Calm, I'm looking at Morningstar info 3 years thru dec 22...data shows hsgfx outperforming prwcx...noting that if you look at hussy just stonk portion of hsgfx since 2000 he outperforms spy by something like 400 bps year average....
Not a hussy fan boy, but we'll see....

@fd1000. Totally understand your perspective regarding experts. What's your perspective if I stated hussy hsgfx has outperformed fan favorite prwcx groovy guireaux over the past 3 plus years?
My point being the experts you referenced had no way of knowing the 40 + trillion or so the global central banks would be pumped into the markets. Now that go bye bye maybe just maybe a more realistic investment approach is called for? Maybe all the newer bloggers and podcasters weren't the experts after all and maybe hussy, arnott and the grey beards will prevail?
Thoughts?
Merry Christmas to all
Baseball fan

Just wondering : Instead of going with a CD or treasury for two years, investing in equities? As of now one CD for 1 year & 2 Treasuries, 1 year, & 1- 2 year maturities.
Currently 7 CD's or Treasures coming due through 5/1/23.
Can anyone see interest bearing instruments bearing close to 5% for much longer ?
Fed meeting in Feb. will probably set the plate for 2023.
Just my 2 cents, Derf

I found this on LTCI premiums from tax-deferred plans from KPMG summary. However, meaning of "high-quality" LTC plan isn't clear, so we have to wait for clarification.
Section 334, Long-term care contracts purchased with retirement plan distributions. Section 334 permits retirement plans to distribute up to $2,500 per year for the payment of premiums for certain specified long term care insurance contracts. Distributions from plans to pay such premiums are exempt from the additional 10 percent tax on early distributions. Only a policy that provides for high quality coverage is eligible for early distribution and waiver of the 10 percent tax. Section 334 is effective 3 years after date of enactment of this Act.
https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/us/pdf/2022/12/tnf-secure-act-section-by-section-dec20-2022.pdf

Agree. 2022 is a great example and few (if) guessed it is one of the worst year in recent years.

Here's KPMG's description of every section of Secure Act 2.0 that made it into the omnibus bill (19 pages).
https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/us/pdf/2022/12/tnf-secure-act-section-by-section-dec20-2022.pdf
Full text of bill: https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/JRQ121922.PDF
Since Forbes offered opinions about some of the sections, I'll try to explain Kiplinger's observation that "other [supporters of the legislation] have expressed concern that some provisions in the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 primarily benefit high-income earners."
https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/bipartisan-retirement-savings-package-in-massive-budget-bill
Section 107: raising retirement age. This is a tax break for high earners; Forbes notes: "This provision mostly impacts people with wealth who don’t need their RMD and can leave the money to grow."
It might have made more sense to treat IRAs and 401(k)s the same - don't require RMDs so long as you are working. Otherwise, you are retired and thus should be drawing from retirement accounts.
Wonder why increasing the age to 75 won't happen for a decade? It's because these laws only have to look ten years out when considering budget impact. This change in RMD age is said to be the most costly provision of the SECURE Act, but most of that cost escapes scrutiny. Accounting gimmick. (See also JCT analysis of SECURE 2.0 Act.)
Sections 108, 109: increasing catch up amounts. According to a current Vanguard study, only 2%-3% of those earning under $100K max out even with the limits already in place. 37% of those earning over $100K max out.
Section 202: raising QLAC limits. Currently $145K (inflation indexed) up to 25% of account balance, will be raised to $200K (inflation indexed), with no percentage cap. QLACs are basically insurance policies against living "too long". There is a strong correlation between income and longevity.
Section 325: No more RMD for Roth 401(k)s. This section comes under Title III - Simplification and Clarification of Retirement Plan Rules. There's a lot of good cleanup in this Title. Section 325 makes the RMD treatment of Roth 401(k)s and Roth IRAs the same. Complete simplification would have made the treatment of RMDs the same for everything - Roths and Traditionals, employer plans and IRAs.
Being able to leave more money in tax-sheltered accounts mostly benefits those who do not need to take money from those accounts. So while this section doesn't add benefits for the better off, it doesn't address this disparity of benefits either.
Sections 603 and 604 come under Title VI - revenue provisions. They are more accounting gimmicks to make it look like tax revenue is being increased. By moving some contributions (high wage earner catch ups and some employer matches) from traditional to Roth, these provisions increase immediate revenue while moving the costs largely outside the 10 year budget window. At best, the present value of those costs is break even; more likely these changes are revenue losers.
Analysis of earlier but similar Senate Bill (EARN):
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/senate-retirement-bill-would-cost-84-billion-without-gimmicks
Section 603: High earner catch up provisions must be Roth. Since this doesn't affect anyone earning $145K (inflation adjusted) or more and rhus constitutes a new restriction on high earners, simple logic says this is not a change that benefits high earners. But it's not the onerous provision that Forbes suggests. Effectively it is a forced Roth conversion.
Higher wage earners rejoiced when they were finally permitted to do Roth conversions starting in 2010. While those conversions were not forced, converting some savings was generally regarded as a positive. Especially since pre-paying taxes enables one to enhance the post-tax value of tax-sheltered accounts.
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2010/jan/20091743.html
This legislation has much to commend it, including changes that encourage participation and make it easier to participate. Though in terms of dollars and cents, it is skewed toward those who are already contributing and can afford to contribute more.

The suit isn't strange if you consider whether Microsoft, which owns XBox, will allow users of Sony Playstation to continue playing updated versions of extremely popular Activision games like Call of Duty after the merger is done. Microsoft's promise to allow Call of Duty specifically to be on Playstation for ten years should alleviate some of those fears. But there are also World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero and others.

Why do people think foreign looks best over the next ten years? Valuations? I've heard that for years now.
Seems to me there are a lot of headwinds from inflation, and collateral damage from the war in Europe. Neither of those has a predictable end point.
That being said. I do own some IHDG and FYLD just in case. ;>)

Some pundits have been touting foreign stocks in recent years.
There is currently plenty of negative sentiment for foreign equities due to macro headwinds.
I don't know if foreign stocks will finally outperform US stocks over the next decade.
Since I don't know the outcome, foreign equity allocation is maintained as somewhat of a hedge.
From a performance perspective, foreign exposure increased my 2000 - 2009 ("lost decade") portfolio returns.
However, foreign stocks have really underperformed since then.

Why do people think foreign looks best over the next ten years? Valuations? I've heard that for years now.
Seems to me there are a lot of headwinds from inflation, and collateral damage from the war in Europe. Neither of those has a predictable end point.
That being said. I do own some IHDG and FYLD just in case. ;>)

Matt Levine, Part 2:
If you are delinquent on a car loan to Wells Fargo, eventually some system at Wells Fargo decides to repossess your car. There is some delay between when this system sets the repossession in motion and when someone actually takes the car. In the meantime, if you make a payment, or sign an agreement with some other person at Wells Fargo to avoid repossession, then some other system at Wells Fargo knows that Wells Fargo should not repossess your car. Do those systems talk to each other? Does the person signing the agreement, or the mailbox receiving your payment, have a way to stop the repossession that is lurching into motion? Meh, sometimes, maybe, but not all the time.
Again, this does not seem like rational profit-maximizing behavior by Wells Fargo; repossessing the car is surely more of a pain than having the borrower start making payments again. No one at Wells Fargo was like “bwahahaha, a clever trick would be to repossess people’s cars even after they start paying their loans back.” Wells Fargo just did it anyway. It is an emergent feature of Wells Fargo’s bureaucracy, and its computers.

Or:
Guaranteed Asset Protection (GAP) contracts are a type of debt cancellation contract (DCC) that generally relieve the borrower from the obligation to pay the remaining amount of the borrower’s loan on the vehicle above the vehicle’s depreciated value in the case of a major accident or theft. The auto dealer markets GAP coverage to the borrower and is paid the GAP fee. However, borrowers often finance GAP fees as part of their auto loan at origination and the GAP contract becomes part of the auto loan contract. If the borrower pays off the loan early, or the GAP contract otherwise terminates, the borrower may be entitled to a refund of the unearned portion of the GAP fee that they financed when first buying the vehicle. Such refund obligations usually are governed by the terms of the GAP contract executed between the borrower and the originating dealer, with GAP contracts sometimes requiring that the borrower make a written request to the originating dealer for a GAP refund. Respondent, as the owner and servicer of the GAP contracts, did not ensure that unearned GAP fees were refunded to all borrowers who paid off their loans early.

That is just, like, Wells Fargo entered into a complicated contract with its auto-loan borrowers, and the contract provided that in certain circumstances, years in the future, Wells Fargo would have to send some money to the borrowers, and Wells Fargo just stuck the contract in a drawer somewhere and ignored it, and so did the borrowers, so it never sent them the money. Very understandable, for the borrowers, who are busy people who have jobs and lives and are not necessarily reading every word of their auto-loan contracts. Less understandable, for the bank, which is a bank.

Or:
Another error occurred from July 2013 until September 2018, when Respondent did not offer no-application modifications to approximately 190 borrowers with Government Sponsored Entity (GSE) loans. Respondent erroneously identified these borrowers as deceased and therefore did not assess their eligibility for modifications. Respondent is paying approximately $2.4 million in remediation to these borrowers.

It is a little hard to tell how that one would work? Like, the rule is something like “certain mortgage borrowers need to be offered this loan modification.” Wells Fargo went through its records to see who needed to be offered the modification, and decided not to offer it to these 190 people because they were dead. They were not dead, so, a failure of record-keeping by Wells Fargo. But also … they were not offered the modification, so they kept paying their mortgages?[1] Like every month Wells Fargo would get a check from these people whom it had erroneously identified as deceased? If you got a check every month from someone who you thought was dead, you would be surprised, and presumably you would update your views. (You might think “aha, they are not dead,” or you might think “wow ghosts are real and very financially responsible,” or you might call them to say “so are you dead or what?”) But Wells Fargo is not a human with normal human intuitions. It is a big bureaucratic institution with databases that don’t necessarily talk to each other in sensible ways, and it blithely went along cashing checks from people while also believing they were dead.
Here are CFPB Director Rohit Chopra’s remarks on the enforcement action:

In the CFPB’s eleven years of existence, Wells Fargo has consistently been one of the most problematic repeat offenders of the banks and credit unions we supervise. …
Put simply, Wells Fargo is a corporate recidivist that puts one third of American households at risk of harm. Finding a permanent resolution to this bank’s pattern of unlawful behavior is a top priority. Today, CFPB is announcing an important step toward that goal: restitution for victims of Wells Fargo’s widespread illegal activities. …
While today’s order addresses a number of consumer abuses, it should not be read as a sign that Wells Fargo has moved past its longstanding problems or that the CFPB’s work here is done. Importantly, the order does not provide immunity for any individuals, nor, for example, does it release claims for any ongoing illegal acts or practices.
While $3.7 billion may sound like a lot, the CFPB recognizes that this alone will not fix Wells Fargo’s fundamental problems. Over the past several years, Wells Fargo executives have taken steps to fix longstanding problems, but it is also clear that they are not making rapid progress. We are concerned that the bank’s product launches, growth initiatives, and other efforts to increase profits have delayed needed reform.

Imagine being the sort of person who gets ahead in banking and becomes a senior executive at Wells Fargo. One of your subordinates comes to you to be like “I have an idea for a new product that will attract a lot of customers and bring in a lot of revenue.” Another one of your subordinates comes to you to be like “sometimes we charge people late fees even after agreeing not to, because our systems don’t talk to each other very well; I have an idea for how to modernize them to make sure that doesn’t happen. It will cost a lot of money, but in exchange we, uh, won’t get to charge as many late fees?” Which subordinate would you want to spend more time with? Who sounds like more fun?