Warren Buffet'

[happydreams]

Barfay was on Charlie Rose, 10/02/08

What a human dynamo old Warren is. He never broke stride; reassuring us that America will weather this downturn, then rattles off the standard platitudes: America is the greatest thing ever, living standards, opportunity, etc. The guy is about as ingratiating as it gets unless you have a reasonable threshold for suspending disbelief.

For some Rome was the greatest place to be when it was at its peak and even in its decline relative to the barbarian world, but just as in the US today, only for some. How good it was depended on what your job was. Soldiers facing the barbarians at Teutoborg Forest (AD 14) may not have shared such positive sentiments. This battle was similar in its shock effect to our Iraq mess only it happened much quicker. Three legions were wiped out in a few days. The slaves whose labor and slaughter in the Coliseum made the glory of Rome possible I'm sure had a different take than the rich as well. It would be a slave 400 years after Teutoborg who opened the Salarian gate letting the barbarians in who had Rome under siege. No small irony that; for 600 years Rome had kept the hoards out only to be undone by one slave.

It never ceases to amaze me when I listen to a guy like Barfay. To watch his cheeriness and confidence in America. Oh, he acknowledges setbacks, but only briefly and always in the context of the larger progress being made.


No doubt America has been good for Buffet' as it has been for other moneybags. People who never risked anything and speciously pick the rosy side of things seldom mentioning the real costs and who pays those costs, the corruptions of empire such as the wars and the profiteers who get us into them, or the monopolies that swamped free markets long ago. They never talk about the these things because, I am growing more convinced of this, they simply do not see who pays the costs for their games. They are in a state of denial, or, as with Bush and Palin, certifiable psychopaths on par with Caligula or Elagobalus. They see NOTHING except their own interests, and their discredited philosophy which, if you follow their logic, is the key to economic well being which leads to social and political well being, blah, blah.

With all the talk about free trade we have the most socialistic action imaginable in the bailouts. This blatant violation of free market is somehow glossed over. Buffet' told Rose he would trust Paulson with his life or livelihood without blinking. Well, if I was Buffet' I would too. Since they are both Wall Streeters who serve only Wall Street it's a good bet that what one does will not be a threat to the other. It will be interesting to see how much Buffet makes on this "crisis". Apparently he contributed a billion dollars to the bailout. What a ludicrous gesture. What difference does a billion make to a multi-billionaire?

We must have the bailout he said, and repeated the idea going around that the Treasury will make a profit from the whole thing. Well, I am thinking, what good will that do if Wall Street owns, as it does, the US government? Heck, we have seen what happens to surpluses like that of the Clinton Era once Wall Street joins with fascists. Those Wall Streeters will find some way to get that money into their coffers and a lot more of our youth in coffins no doubt. Charlie Rose went into one of his laughing spells somewhere in this part. Sometimes I think a midget sits under Rose's desk and pinches him in the ass when it is time to laugh. He challenged none of Buffet's self-serving gibberish.

To top it off Buffet feigned concern that he is paying less in taxes as a percentage of his wealth than the girl who empties the trash-can in his office. He seems to relish the challenge of making money. Behind that bubbly personality I'm sure he also likes to see others struggling. "Why not employ some of your financial wizardry to solve that problem Buffet'" I wonder to myself?

Wouldn't that be something.


He doesn't work at this problem because he doesn't care and somewhere down inside he knows that it is precisely this kind of inequality that makes his and his ilk's opulence possible. He knows the system is stacked against the office girl, the veteran, the day laborer and that to acknowledge this would be to go against the capitalist ideology, the true nature of that system and all the bullshit conventional wisdoms--individual achievement, hard work, competition, equal opportunity, fair play, etc.--that are pumped out 24/7 by the perception managers. Helping the downtrodden is antithesis to all of that.

[stray cat]

1. Isn't Buffet a major economic advisor for Obama?

[happydreams]

6. He is along with Goldman Sachs and a number of other Wall Street

financial institutions.

[mmonk]

2. Actually, Buffet has always been progressive in his outlook

and politics.

[EC]

3. You're hatin on the wrong Billionaire

It's the Gramm's, Bush's and Chaney's of the world you should be hatin on...I'm guessing you don't like Soros too...?

[happydreams]

5. Yea, I don't like Soros either. He and Barfbucket are the same thing and

if you read my topic your would know what that thing is.

IOW get specific.

[happydreams]

8. Here is what Soros and Buffet are all about--predator capitalists with a philanthropic

veneer.

George Soros' role in the Asia Crisis of 1997from: THE ECONOMIC TIME: SOROS BLAMED FOR SHAKEUP IN SE ASIA CURRENCIES
www.mailstar.net/asia-crisis.html

...The speculators guessed that the Thais would rather fight than devalue. Devaluation would hurt the elite, who would watch principal and interest payments soar for their dollar-denominated loans. The alternative to devaluation was a further hike in interest rates, but that would produce a flood of bankruptcies and further weaken a banking system that was already in trouble because lax government supervisors had allowed their banker cronies to ignore capital requirements.

Sensing that their prey had been cornered by their own venality, the wolves began to circle in early 1997. The amoral pursuit of profit was about to punish the sins of cronyism and corruption. Drawing from multibillion-dollar war chests, hedge-fund operators such as George Soros and Julian Robertson intensified their attack on the baht. One way the speculators bet against the currency was by entering into contracts with dealers who would give dollars in return for an agreement to repay a specific amount of bahts some months in the future. If the baht rose in value, the seller of the contract made money; but if it fell, the buyer profited because he could repay the contract with cheaper bahts. Demand for such contracts started to drive up interest rates, and the Bank of Thailand began issuing many of these so-called forward contracts itself.

This action turned out to be a fatal misstep that placed in the hands of speculators the perfect weapon with which to attack the currency. "It's as though an unarmed gunslinger walked into town and the sheriff handed him a pistol," remarked a beneficiary of the central bank's unintended largesse. Now speculators had access to an estimated $15 billion in forward contracts issued in February and March that they would not have to cover for as much as a year. An estimated 80% to 90% of these forward contracts ended up in the hands of speculators. By May the central bank realized it was contributing to the baht's undoing and abruptly stopped issuing any more forward contracts.

Sensing blood, traders began moving in for the kill and in mid-May flooded the market with orders to sell bahts. But the government began playing hardball. The central bank invoked a mutual-assistance agreement with monetary authorities in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia and spent more than $10 billion in just a few days buying bahts and selling dollars. .....more

[Raine]

4. Buffet is on our side, why are you calling

him "Barfy"? :shrug: :-(

[renate]

7. "rich" does not equal "evil" or "selfish"

http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/25/magazines/fortune/charity2.fortune/index.htm


I was wired at birth to allocate capital and was lucky enough to have people around me early on - my parents and teachers and Susie - who helped me to make the most of that.

In any case, Susie didn't get very excited when I told her we were going to get rich. She either didn't care or didn't believe me - probably both, in fact. But to the extent we did amass wealth, we were totally in sync about what to do with it - and that was to give it back to society.

In that, we agreed with Andrew Carnegie, who said that huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society. In my case, the ability to allocate capital would have had little utility unless I lived in a rich, populous country in which enormous quantities of marketable securities were traded and were sometimes ridiculously mispriced. And fortunately for me, that describes the U.S. in the second half of the last century.

Certainly neither Susie nor I ever thought we should pass huge amounts of money along to our children. Our kids are great. But I would argue that when your kids have all the advantages anyway, in terms of how they grow up and the opportunities they have for education, including what they learn at home - I would say it's neither right nor rational to be flooding them with money.

[happydreams]

9. In this case it does equal selfish at best and evil at worst.

[happydreams]

10. Buffet and Soros are both predatory bastards

The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros - Google Books Resultby Mark Tier, Warren Buffett, George Soros - 2006 - Business & Economics - 368 pages
The bank had figured out that the baht was "really worth" around 32 to the dollar. ... Thailand was one of the Asian Tigers, a country that was developing ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0312358784...