Thursday, January 21, 2010

Being Warren Buffett IV

I'm no financial expert, but it looks like the Oracle of Omaha has lost his touch. He once looked at debt as disease, now he is just as excessively leveraged as many others with his hand out like all others who others who indulged in bogus derivatives. Berkshire lost its coveted Triple A credit rating, although much later than others. Positioning seems to have its privilege whether deserved or not.

Reuters reports that
"yesterday Buffett came out against Obama’s proposed bank tax, but his comments were inconsistent. On one hand he’s always maintained banks needed to be bailed out, yet he opposes ways to make them pay for it. At this point, financial giants in which Buffett has large stakes — Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and General Electric — all benefit from an implicit too-big-to-fail government insurance policy. How can Mr. Buffett, an insurance executive, argue that it’s inappropriate to charge them for it?

This is just the latest example of Buffett talking his book.

Buffett also lobbied for and profited greatly from the bailouts. He spoke publicly that his investments in Goldman and GE were predicated on the passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, saying that he trusted Congress would "do the right thing."

Later he mocked the stress test, which had over-leveraged banks raise needed capital. This was bad for Buffett because it diluted his stakes in banks.
Isn't it extraordinary that Buffett and his ilk had their hand out for government welfare as an unwed unemployed uneducated mother might, only that her need would not equal nearly one trillion dollars?

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