Posted on 11/03/2009 9:45:41 AM PST by TheDailyChange
What is your opinion on Buffett's move to buy Burlington Northern today, and was this move part of a much larger (0bama) plan?
How will this impact the man on the street, good, bad, don't care?
Remember, Buffett backed Obama for president.
How will this impact the man on the street, good, bad, don't care?
Remember, Buffett backed Obama for president.
The dollar will continue to fall, therefore commodity (oil) prices will rise. It will be cheaper to transport goods via rail than by truck.
Interesting perspective, thank you for chiming in.
Soon we will see Burlington Northern taking over all planning and decisions on the proposed high-speed rail lines that will be paid for 100% by the taxpayers.
Maybe he sees:
Higher diesel taxes/costs in the future?
More regulations on truckers or diesels (nee CARB?)?
He will have control over the coal supply, food supply too, a lot is transported by train....
In Germany they transported people,
to the ovens.
He is a captialist. Coke and many others targeted by Obama.
Dabney Coleman would be pleased.
Buffett is smart enough to know cap and tax will never pass. Remember, the US Senate voted 95-0 to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. Also, he will be in charge when the US goes to clean coal tech, as there is a new clean coal tech power plant being built outside of Pensacola, FL.
Own Something, Anything....The Dollar is going to lose value under Obamanomics.
Inflation is coming to a Dollar near you.
My first thought was of those railroad companies in Atlas Shrugged...
It was a bargain.
Buffett is one of our country’s most successful investors, and arguably one of the world’s most successful capitalists (by combining running businesses with investing). He is a role model to investors everywhere, and was one of the world’s richest men long before Obama was even in the Senate.
I just don’t see the conspiracy connection here — certainly lots of rich people backed Obama. It doesn’t mean that every business or investment decision these guys make is part of a giant global conspiracy. That’s like saying since Steve Jobs is a liberal, the next iPhone is going to come with secret Obama-planted bugs in the software.
[Of course, the reason there’s no need for putting bugs in cell phones, because the NSA can easily listen to any phone conversation via equipment they’ve got at telcos..]
Not at the price he’s paying for it. If he had offered $80/share, maybe. But the reporting is that he’s offering about $100/share. That’s a premium for the company as it is now and probably for the next year to 18 months.
I’m a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder (and so are my parents and siblings). Buffett’s been buying Burlington stock since as far back as 2005 or 2006 because at the shareholder meeting he described how Bill Gates had convinced him that changes in technology meant that railroads could carry nearly twice the capacity, earning far higher returns on equity. This meant that productivity would increase and if we really have reached peak oil, railroads would become far more attractive relative to trucking lines. He had a whole presentation on it years ago and explained why we were doing it (only after it crossed the SEC reporting threshold though - otherwise, he’s notoriously secret about what he’s buying or selling).
He kept buying every year when the SEC disclosure forms came out, and I think the fact that Berkshire’s sitting on nearly $40 billion in cash and he could just take the entire thing at an attractive price is the sole reason. After all, he’s been buying it since before Obama was in the U.S. Senate. The best time to buy things is when the rest of the world has no money and he’s been talking about how he wanted a $20+ billion deal since the General Re transaction back in the late 1990’s. It looks like he finally found it (the only thing that came close was Marmon, which he bought a couple years ago, for several billion dollars from the Pritzker family in Chicago but that’s chump change compared to this deal.)
With Buffett, there is one motivation and one motivation only: Making the highest return on invested capital. He wouldn’t violate that for anyone, including his family, let alone a political candidate. It’s always about the money. It’s how he’s wired.
He may have simulated a buy price circa $80 by cost averaging with the shs he already has. I haven’t done the math. In essence, I agree with you.
Do you mean Dagny Taggart?
“Do you mean Dagny Taggart?”
I did. My bad. Who is Dabney Coleman?????
I began reading Atlas Shrugged in 1973. I only have a few hundred pages left.
him and Gates....two world elitist trying to kill off for good the middle class...the only class that can fight back at them....they've already enslaved the poor ......
“I began reading Atlas Shrugged in 1973. I only have a few hundred pages left.”
LOL! Yeah, it’s a struggle there during “the speach”.
The railroad was Taggart Transcontinental, BTW.
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