[Voltage]

I for one am tired of paying the taxes such 'charities' avoid!

[keithtoo]

It is unbelievable that they turn over the entire asset base every 2 months. Day trading with $35B???

[CrazyIvan]

This amount of money "doing good" is scary. It could end up with a bad case of Ford Foundations' Syndrome.

[GovernmentShrinker]

This outfit spends a great deal more each year on third world health and education programs than UNESCO (and that was BEFORE the Buffett funds). I'd a lot rather give a tax break to a private organization like this one, which is undoubtedly getting a lot more done for each dollar it spends than any UN agency, than have our tax dollars going to fund the UN's endless stream of corrupt boondoggles (of which UNESCO represents only a small portion). Let's work on getting the US out of the UN first, and later we can worry about whether or not this sort of private philanthropic organization should be tax-exempt.

[AntiScumbag]

The 2004 federal tax return lists investment management fees of $41.5 million against end-of-year investments of $35 billion. That works out to fees of barely 1 basis point--1/100 of 1%--a fraction of the cost at even the most frugally run index mutual funds.

William P. Barrett needs a remedial math course. $41 million is a little over 1/10th of 1%, not 1/100th of 1%.