Warren Buffet to Uncle Sam

WOW! Very interesting piece. Here it is...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/opinion/17buffett.html?_r=2&hp

Thoughts?

 

Buffet and the rest of the hedge fund/Wall Street crowd are doing great. Meanwhile, the Average Joe is still losing their house as people like Buffet and the banks he helps support buy up their assets. Buffet has upped his stake in Goldman Sachs to $7.5 Billion. Since Goldman is going to be one of the first of a relatively few beneficiaries of Bernanke's new money printing scheme, Buffet stands to profit handsomely.

 

Buffet and Berkshire benefitted tremendously from the bailouts. The rest of us? Not so much.

 

He looks like an asshole for writing that when people are still jobless and getting evicted.

 

It was the perfect antidote to Act One of this This American Life episode:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/415/crybabies
(starts at 6:30)

 

I listened to it again just now, and it still enrages me.

 

Kind of unrelated--but if you listen to it check out Act Two as well, as it happens to be about the origins of the NBA flop, and how Vlade Divac didn't necessarily invent it. An interviewee argues it actually stems from changes in hand checking rules.

 

I think what he was saying was the Uncle Sam averted an enormous collapse of our economy, and that even though many will find ways to criticize (hence this thread), they did a fine job in that sense.

I'm not saying I don't agree with others in this thread, though. Wall Street got handouts and are going along, without financial regulations, like nothing ever happened. Fuck 'em.

Aren't people always jobless and getting evicted?

 

not usually at this rate.

 

the "enormous collapse" was just a theory by "analysts" who failed to see it happening the first time around. it could have been better if large companies failed, but instead they are treading water and remain insolvent.

 

I think if nothing was done there would have been a huge panic. People are risk averse

 

That is a big risk to take.

 

Its even riskier to let companies that do not work, rife with corruption or cannot function on their own to continue to operate.

 

TARP was shitty crony capitalism. What should have happened was the insolvent banks should have gone into receivorship and something akin to the Resolution Trust Corporation should have been set up to clean up the mess. The equity holders in those companies lose everything instead of getting saved. Investment banks used to be small and nimble. They had to comanage offerings because their balance sheets couldn't handle the size and exposure. The repeal of Glass-Steagall change all that. Investment and Commercial banking needs to be separated again so the US Taxpayer doesn't have this kind of exposure ever again. The GSEs also need to die.

 

The "enormous collapse" was code for the worth of hedge funds, ridiculous mortgages, and other versions of imaginary wealth that were practiced by banks and abetted by the Dodds and Franks. Mom and Pop America who weren't over their heads in credit trouble were always going to be fine. I imagine that most of the posters in this board are in that camp.

OHOH, Buffet should be giving W. Bush blowjobs for signing TARP, because Warren maybe be living in a trailer today had he not been bailed out and his bills started to become due.