Dear Marion,

Margaret and I very much agree that after 11 months of
uninterrupted correspondence it's time that we should
meet face to face. We look forward to seeing you in
Belmont, on Nantucket, or for that matter in Konnarock
whenever it suits you to visit. The details, of course,
would need to be ironed out when the time comes.

Thank you for your comments about your prospective
Vanguard investments. You may have inferred from
previous comments, that I am in the process of becoming
acquainted with Vanguard, as I transfer to them
substantial assets from Morgan Stanley whose
policies I am finding inordinately manipulative and
exploitative. Your comments, if any, about experiences
in dealing with Vanguard would be useful to me.

As for the investment "decisions" themselves, I am
progressively impressed that they are demonstrations
of my ignorance. I remind myself, how often my assumptions
have often been proved wrong. I remember buying common
stock in Reading Railroad, which was paying a large
dividend, because railroads were then in decline; they
ultimately awent bankrupt. I ask myself whether the
Century Telephone stock (CTL) which is yielding 8.6%
and has paid dividends since 1974, and AT&T (T) which
yields 6.6% are facing a similar fate as the railroads,
the cotton mills, the steel mills, the automobile
manufacturers, a fate which I am too obtuse to recognize;
or whether such stocks - and there are others like them, -
are buying opportunities which happen to be out of fashion.

I'm sceptical, and I hope my candor isn't offensive, of
your hypothesis that Latin-American economies are poised
for growth. They may be, - but then, many uncertainties
can intervene. If the grass usually looks greener on the
other side of the fence, it's perhaps because its remoteness
makes it inaccessible to realistic evaluation. A few months ago,
I explored the possibility of investing in European 
government bonds on the now obviously foolish assumption
that the fiscal policies of foreign governments - of England,
Germany, Switzerland - were likely more responsible than
our own.

That's all I have on my mind just now. Maybe more later.
Jochen