Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Pardon me for not genuflecting at the altar of Buffet, but his proposal to write redundant muni bond insurance is entirely self-serving.
Hiving off the best bits of these entities business for a price (otherwise known as money for old rope) is only in Berkshire's interests. And a sharp stick in the eye of his new competitors
And who owns a large stake in Moody's, the rating agency that downgraded XLCA last week?
There's nothing wrong with the former (I'll reserve judgement on the latter), but the man is no Saint and we'd all be better off if people stopped pretending he was.
When I was a banker I had a watchphrase - when someone says "We're just simple (country) folk", hold on to your wallet.
Hiving off the best bits of these entities business for a price (otherwise known as money for old rope) is only in Berkshire's interests. And a sharp stick in the eye of his new competitors
And who owns a large stake in Moody's, the rating agency that downgraded XLCA last week?
There's nothing wrong with the former (I'll reserve judgement on the latter), but the man is no Saint and we'd all be better off if people stopped pretending he was.
When I was a banker I had a watchphrase - when someone says "We're just simple (country) folk", hold on to your wallet.
1 Comments:
By 
TigerHawk, at
Tue Feb 12, 09:18:00 PM:
You have to admire Buffett. His personally modest lifestyle, which I do admire, allows him to do incredibly self-serving things and not get hammered the way other billionaires do. For instance, he can claim to care about global climate change when hanging with his activist pals and wax eloquent on the important of ethics in business and still promote the heck out of NetJets, which has a lower social utility/carbon footprint ratio than just about any business imaginable.
