Squanderville versus Thriftville (Warren Buffet)

fortune ^ | oct 2003 | Warren Buffet

[dennisw]

btttttttttttttttttt

[AndyJackson]

What bothers me are the number of freepers who whistle past the graveyard. You may not like Buffet's politics, or Soros's either, but I think they both have somewhat a better trackrecord of figuring out which way things are going than the average person around here does.

[dennisw]

It's a great and truthful essay. Too bad more have not read it.

[dennisw]

Hew neut! Give me an eye of a neut (newt) for the recipe.


Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

William Shakespeare
(1564 - 1616), Macbeth

[dennisw]

btt

[dennisw]

bttt

[loyal_follower]

There is a fine rebuttal to Buffet's article appearing in the Capital Flow Watch web log, under the title "Warren Buffet Fears Foreign Ownership". This web log also has several other articles debunking panic attacks about the "trade deficit".

[Your Nightmare]

I'm not smart enough to agree or disagree with Buffet, but lets look at what's happened to the dollar vs the Yen and Euro since he wrote this article (Oct. 2003).

[loyal_follower]

Certainly the dollar has declined against the Euro, but most of America's foreign trade is with Latin America and the rest of Asia in which the foreign exchange picture is quite different. Euroland, as a whole, has a trade surplus with the rest of the world. This means that there is a shortage of euros relative to dollars in the hands of foreigners. By elementary supply and demand, the euro must appreciate relative to the dollar. But, so what? If the cost of European vacations and French wine increases for Americans, that hurts Europeans more than Americans. Americans can buy Chilean or Australian wine and vacation in Hong Kong or Singapore. The "fallacy" in Buffet's article is not that the dollar is not declining against the Euro, but his blaming this on America's "spendthrift" habits. The trade deficit, as the Capital Flow Watch article points out, is the result of foreigners willingness to accept dollars as payment for goods and services, not the result of American's savings habits. The criticism aimed at Mr. Buffet is not that he is not a smart investor, which he obviously is, but rather that he is using a phony argument to justify massive government intervention in commerce.

[dennisw]

It’s Oct 2007. Got a chart update?

[winodog]

Will common sense win out in the end, or can we actually build a upsidedown pyramid to the stars?

[dennisw]

You cannot borrow your way to prosperity

[Pelham]

An article I missed at the time. Interesting to see how Buffet’s prediction for the dollar turned out.

[JesseRichman]

Foreigners’ willingness to accept dollars as payment for goods and services has indeed been remarkable. And the vast inflow of foreign savings has helped drive U.S. savings down. But the costs for the US are also remarkably high. In my recent book, my coauthors and I explore the costs of the trade deficit, and possible solutions, including the Import Credits idea. The publisher’s website www.idealtaxes.com has two or three sample chapters available for viewing. Just because foreigners (and foreign governments in particular) have seen it to be in their interests to manipulate the terms of trade doesn’t mean that this is a good thing for the U.S. economy.

[dennisw]

A prescient blast from the past

[Pelham]

Indeed. Even if some on our side dismiss him because they can only see his politics.