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A supporter of Obama's economic plan and a Keynesian disciple, Warren Buffett seems unable to decide if we are still in a recession. On September 13, Bloomberg reported that Buffett announced he was "a huge bull in this market." He seemed self-assured that the economy was in no longer contracting and that "we will not have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board." Buffett blamed the negative perception of the economy mostly on the media, which did not reflect his view of the business environment. The current economic doldrums apparently are a...

Warren Buffett. We could jot down the nearly endless list of descriptives that would just begin to protray his followers’ feelings towards him. But it’s time consuming, so let’s just put this as a constant: He’s The Man. We know. But let’s just explore this a bit further. Ordinary investors follow every step Warren Buffett makes. But so do the seasoned professional money managers. They even invest their clients’ funds in Berkshire Hathaway stock. Everybody knows that if they had invested $1000 with Warren Buffett back in the day, they would have been a zillionaire today. We can’t go back...

Warren Buffett hired 39-year old Todd Combs, a former Connecticut hedge fund manager with $400 AUM (assets under management), to oversee Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio. From FOXNews: "For three years Charlie Munger and I have been looking for someone of Todd's caliber to handle a significant portion of Berkshire's investment portfolio," Buffett said in a statement. "We are delighted that Todd will be joining us." Combs previously worked at Castle Point Capital, where he managed just $400 million. Under Buffett, Combs will manage a “significant portion” of the investment portfolio, according to the firm. What caught his eye? The Wall Street...

Mega billionaire Warren Buffet once called derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction." Apparently, Buffet has failed to heed his own advice to avoid them. Warren Buffett's company posted an 8 per cent drop in third-quarter net income as the value of its derivatives portfolio fell sharply, but BNSF railroad and Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.A-N125,560.001,080.000.87%) many other operating companies performed well... The biggest factor in the decline was a $95-million loss on Berkshire's derivatives, some of which are tied to equity markets and credit defaults. A year ago, those derivatives were worth $1.1-billion.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will name Warren Buffet as one of fifteen winners of the 2010 Medal of Freedom, a White House official said on Wednesday. Buffet, one of the world's most successful investors who has donated a vast chunk of his multibillion dollar fortune to charity, will receive the medal at a White House ceremony early next year. .. Buffet is one of Obama's closest defenders in the business community..

SNIP Buffett also has some inspirational words for those worried about China surpassing the U.S. He told Vanity Fair: “We had four million people here in 1790." “We’re not more intelligent than people in China, which then had 290 million people, or Europe, which had 50 million. We didn’t work harder, we didn’t have a better climate, and we didn’t have better resources. But we definitely had a system that unleashes potential. "This system works. Since then, we’ve been through at least 15 recessions, a civil war, a Great Depression…. All of these things happen. But this country has optimized...

The Oracle of Omaha had done it again. Here is the latest letter Warren Buffett has written to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. For reasons of typography, we have excluded the tables, as indicated. To read the entire shareholder report, click here. To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: The per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock increased by 13% in 2010. Over the last 46 years (that is, since present management took over), book value has grown from $19 to $95,453, a rate of 20.2% compounded annually.* The highlight of 2010 was our acquisition of...

Let the word go forth: On Friday, March 25, 2011, Warren Buffett predicted the decline of the U.S. dollar. In a speech given in New Delhi (where he's hunting up some cheap Indian stocks), the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A ) (NYSE: BRK-B ) warned investors to avoid "long-term fixed-dollar investments" such as 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds. Buffett worries that the $2.3 trillion in new money our government has pumped into the economy, when combined with interest rates so low they're practically giving money away, are combining to dilute the value of the dollar. As a result, Buffett warns:...

What commonality binds Haim Saban, Penny Pritzker, and Warren Buffett, aside from membership in the billionaire's club?  Guilt, and not the quotidian variety -- unfulfilled potential, disappointing behavior, lost love -- that afflicts most of us.  Theirs is a guilt that only afflicts the very rich -- a guilt that arises from wanting more equitable outcomes coupled with an unwillingness to pay the requisite taxes to achieve those outcomes.  It's the same guilt that has plagued Rockefeller, Kennedy, and Mott progeny for decades. Messrs. Saban and Buffett and Ms Pritzker are newcomers to the world of self-imposed tax-deficiency guilt, but...

Most of us took this week's stock market as self-evident doom, but not Warren Buffett. He's 'never been better'. To Buffett, the S&P's downgrading his company Berkshire Hathaway = opportunity. While buying stocks at cut rates, Buffett is also planning on selling Berkshire Hathaway bonds to take advantage of cheap capital. Buffett told CNN Money's Term Sheet today that the sea of red all over the S&P 500 earlier this week is exactly what he looks forward to--a chance to buy low. "The lower things go, the more I buy. We are in the business of buying," he said. It's...

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched. While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80...

Mr. Warren Buffett wrote a column for the New York Times today in which he argues that he and others in his situation should pay more taxes. There are several problems with his argument: 1. He argues that he and others don't have to pay FICA "taxes". Yes, there is an income cap on FICA contributions, however, FICA was not called a "tax" until recently. FICA is the amount that you pay for your own social security retirement. At one time, it went into a trust fund or a "lock box" as Al Gore called it, payable only for social...

-- In a recent New York Times op-ed article, Warren Buffett asserts that the super-rich do not pay enough taxes. He suggests that any new budget deal should raise rates on the super-rich, especially on their "unearned" income from interest, dividends and capital gains. Buffett is wrong. Bad government policies play a major role in generating inappropriately high incomes, but singling out the super-rich is misguided. And the policy Buffett criticizes most -- low tax rates on capital income -- should be expanded, not eliminated. The first problem with Buffett's view is that the number of super-rich is too small...

Investors might hang on Warren Buffett's every word when it comes to financial advice, but Republicans are less than enthusiastic about the Oracle of Omaha's opinions on taxation. After the billionaire chairman of investment firm Berkshire Hathaway wrote an op-ed in the New York Times complaining that the mega-rich are undertaxed in comparison to the middle class, conservatives urged him to voluntarily send more of his own money to the Internal Revenue Service and leave others alone. Not only are they willfully missing Buffett's point, they're seemingly oblivious to the fact that in many ways his tax ideas mirror those...

Warren Buffett's recent call to increase taxes on the super- and mega-rich has garnered much media attention.  But how much money could such increases actually raise?  What effect could they have on reducing the nation's deficit or debt?  As it turns out, not much.  Below is a quick look at the latest IRS data on earners making more than $100,000: (Figures in $Thousands)   Adjusted Gross Income Income Tax Paid  After-Tax Income (What's left)    $100,000 under $200,000 $1,801,446,897 $212,290,589 $1,589,156,308    $200,000 under $500,000 $905,347,402 $176,322,148 $729,025,254    $500,000 under $1,000,000 $332,037,478 $80,458,185 $251,579,293    $1,000,000 under $1,500,000 $130,149,237...

Former American Express CEO Harvey Golub gives a major rebuttal to calls from Warren Buffett and Barack Obama for more taxes on the rich. Writing in the WSJ, Golub makes three points. First, it is absurd that half of the country pays no income taxes. Second, "the extraordinarily complex tax code is replete with favors to various interest groups and industries." Third, the government is bloated by wasteful spending. Until someone addresses these issues, he says he pays enough: Over the years, I have paid a significant portion of my income to the various federal, state and local jurisdictions in...

Buffett's Berkshire has agreed to buy 50,000 preferred shares of Bank of America for $5 billion. That means he's paying $100,000 per share. He also has options to buy 700 million. That's 7% dilution for shareholders. Buffett says it's not just a vote of confidence in Bank of America, but in the U.S., according to Becky Quick on CNBC. It's a better deal for Bank of America than Buffett gave to Goldman Sachs in some ways, he says. And get this - he dreamt up the idea to invest in Bank of America yesterday - in the bathtub. Bank of...

Warren Buffett has made a career out of casting himself as a common man -- a folksy octogenarian from Omaha who also is the richest man on earth. The billionaire everyman never misses an opportunity to sow his optimistic seeds about stock ownership and America’s future, while professing his profound desire to pay more taxes. Yet when it comes to investing his own billions, this common man has little time for common stocks, but plenty of time for special deals that save him taxes and almost always put him ahead of mere mortal shareholders. Such was the case this past...

This one’s truly, uh ... rich: Billionaire Warren Buffett says folks like him should have to pay more taxes -- but it turns out his firm, Berkshire Hathaway, hasn’t paid what it’s already owed for years. That’s right: As Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson notes, the company openly admits that it owes back taxes since as long ago as 2002. “We anticipate that we will resolve all adjustments proposed by the US Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for the 2002 through 2004 tax years ... within the next 12 months,” the firm’s annual report says. It also cites outstanding...

*snip* General Electric [GE 15.41 0.40 (+2.66%) ^ 0.40 (+2.66%) ] officially notified Berkshire Hathaway [BRK.A 103460.00 -340.00 (-0.33%) ] on Tuesday it intends next month to repurchase the $3 billion of preferred stock it sold him in October 2008.GE has flagged the move for a while. Under terms of the deal it struck with Buffett when all hell was breaking loose, the company led by Jeff Immelt was obliged to wait three years to call the bonds. It also needed to give at least 30 days notice—hence this week's letter from Fairfield, Connecticut, to Omaha. Buffett's money doesn't come...