Posted on 05/08/2009 5:28:36 PM PDT by dennisw
Derivatives plague Berkshire. Buffett said at the shareholders' meeting last week that losses from defaults and bad bets on derivatives would cut into the company's profit and revenue.
Berkshire's insurance business, like many other insurers, has written some contracts on derivatives, promising to pay its trading partners in the event of default on the underlying assets. Defaults had been rising sharply ever since the housing market and economy took a beating.
The company's derivative-related losses totaled $986 million in the quarter, down 7.6% from the $1.1 billion of derivative losses the company suffered in the year-earlier quarter.
The recession has hit Berkshire's stock particularly hard. Its shares lost 31.8% of their value in 2008 and 1.7% so far this year. At one point last year, more than five years of shareholders' gains had been wiped out. And last month, the company lost its "perfect" AAA credit rating, when Moody's downgraded Berkshire one notch.
In recent years Berkshire has typically filed its first-quarter report on the eve of its annual meeting. But the company held its shareholders' meeting a week earlier than its financial report's release this year.
The delay gave rise to some speculation about what the first-quarter report would show. Buffett said last Saturday that the decision was driven largely by a quirk of the calendar - not by any change in policy. The company usually reports its results on the Friday before the 40th day after the quarter's end. This year, the 40th day fell the week after the annual meeting.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
The solution, of course, is for Buffett, Buffett’s company, Buffett’s business partners and most of all Buffett’s family, to pay more in taxes to his good friend Zero’s Marxist government. Much more.
After all, that’s what the “genius” thinks is best for the rest of us.
And also all those Berkshire shareholders.....
Has she never heard of paying the taxes before investing?
Financial weapons of mass destruction.
Buffet was Obama’s advisor and brought this mess upon us.
I think America should take 95% of Buffet’s stock,
and he can have, hmmm, 5% of common stock.
None of this matters. Buy everything in sight, including Berkshire. Dow 9000 next week.
Just leave Jimmy Buffet’s restaurant alone in Florida. The big cheeseburger has a slice of pineapple and a slice of onion and tomato. People pack that place. Jimmy owns the patent on his cheeseburgers.
He was also one of guvernur Arnoids advisor as well. Says enough for me. Of course take courage as he has the housing answer to sell to all who live in this age of the new prosperity and aquired wealth. He owns the nations largest mobile home manufacturing company.
yep. where is the Dow 3000 depression crowd?
They lost half their money when the Dow crashed, and the other half when it roared back 35% in 8 weeks.
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