.

Chris Bloomstran has dropped his annual letter. Its outstanding discussion of Berkshire Hathaway serves as a prolegomenon to the Chairman's letter, which arrives Saturday.

Justin Miller, J.D. gave a terrific presentation on charitable giving to the Foothill-De Anza Foundation today. Smart + Funny is a great combination when presenting on taxes and law.

How the IRS should spend their $80 billion windfall.

7/7.Wiggin later became famous for shorting Chase stock during his own tenure at Chase, thereby making $4,000,000 off the 1929 crash.

6/7.The offering to Woodin was nothing compared to the ten thousand shares reserved for Chase National Bank president Albert Wiggin, who received the offer by telegram in his railroad car.

5/7.Woodin was about to become secretary of the Treasury. No one declined the opportunity to subscribe. The instant arbitrage is worth $237,000 today. When the patronage came to light in the Senate’s 1933 Pecora hearings, it caused a sensation.

4/7 cont. There are no strings tied to this stock, so you can sell it whenever you wish. We just want you to know that we were thinking of you in this connection. Sincerely Yours,.William Ewing.

3/7 cont. I believe the stock is selling in the market around $35 to $37 a share, which means very little, except that people wish to speculate. We are reserving for you 1,000 shares at $20 a share, if you would like to have it.

2/7 My Dear Mr. Woodin:. Although we are making no offering of [Allegheny] stock, as it is not the class of security we wish to offer publicly, we are asking some of our close friends if they would like some of this stock at the same price it is costing us, namely, $20 a share.

1/7 Allegheny Stock, The good old days. The year is 1929, this is from a letter to William Woodin from JP Morgan partner William Ewing.

Prof. Edgeworth, an economist at All Souls’, Oxford, met T.E. Lawrence at the gate one evening as Lawrence was returning from London. “Was it very caliginous in the Metropolis?” Edgeworth inquired. “Somewhat caliginous, but not altogether inspissated”, Lawrence replied.

I just subscribed to Fintech Explorer. Anything Ravi Mulani doesn't know in this space is probably not worth knowing.

When I asked Guerin about being a Superinvestor, he smiled and told me, "That was a long time ago. " I wrote about Guerin and Daily Journal here:

Rick Guerin RIP Lots of discussion of his charity work. No mention of the fact that he was one of Buffett's "Superinvestors of Graham and Doddsville.".

One of my rare op-ed pieces in the WSJ came out this morning, on our Golden Age of Taxes:

Fun to crash the party in today's WSJ op-ed: The IRA Bait and Switch

Dr. Jim Dahle, the White Coat Investor, had me on his pod to talk saving money on investment taxes, my favorite subject. Summary and transcript, too.

Email your Senators if you want to stop the "Secure Act".

On Fox Business News today talking to Ashley Webster about my Wall Street Journal op-ed, "How Congress is Coming for your IRA"