Posted on 09/08/2009 7:12:32 PM PDT by FromLori
Warren E. Buffett has two cardinal rules of investing. Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.
Well, a lot of old rules got trashed when the financial crisis struck — even for the Oracle of Omaha.
At 79, Mr. Buffett is coming off the worst year of his long, storied career. On paper, he personally lost an estimated $25 billion in the financial panic of 2008, enough to cost him his title as the world’s richest man. (His friend and sometime bridge partner, Bill Gates, now holds that honor, according to Forbes.)
And yet few people on or off Wall Street have capitalized on this crisis as deftly as Mr. Buffett. After counseling Washington to rescue the nation’s financial industry and publicly urging Americans to buy stocks as the markets reeled, in he swooped. Mr. Buffett positioned himself to profit from the market mayhem — as well as all those taxpayer-financed bailouts — and thus secure his legacy as one of the greatest investors of all time.
When so many others were running scared last autumn, Mr. Buffett invested billions in Goldman Sachs — and got a far better deal than Washington. He then staked billions more on General Electric. While taxpayers never bailed out Mr. Buffett, they did bail out some of his stock picks. Goldman, American Express, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp — all of them got public bailouts that ultimately benefited private shareholders like Mr. Buffett.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yup. Lib Dem POS. He rushed to Washington Dc post 9/11 to ask for a bailout of his reinsurance companies. Evil moron. The Cherry coke and cheese burgers may catch up to him. Obama wants to have a soda tax and Buffet the adulterer and Kirby scam artists (see Kirby vacs) is a BIG shareholder in coke.
79 years old......25 BILLION lost. These people are little pretend gods in their own minds. Mr. Buffet will be dead in a few years, he could have left a mark on the world, instead, he will be known as "number two". I will never understand why these people crave such power......then again, I'm poor.
I know that you mean 'poor' by worldly standards, but, some of the most wealthy by those standards are so poor spiritually as to cause sympathy for their condition...gaining the whole world, but losing their souls. I wouldn't want to trade places.
Wonderfully said, thank you LJ...
He supported Obama and deserves every loss he gets.
Matthew 19:24
He’s not always right. He is just a man.
Thank you and I agree.
“At 79, Mr. Buffett is coming off the worst year of his long, storied career.....”
....he’s had a lot more up years than down.....in the 1990s BRK-B stock was awful good to me from a cap.appreciation standpoint...it put my daughter thru law school...I would still own it if it paid a dividend.
He back Zero. I guess he is lucky to only lose 25 Billion.
Some wizard. He bet on a race horse that he knew was going to be juiced.
He does give quite a bit to Planned Parenthood if I recall correctly.
That's leaving some type of mark on the world.
Agreed. It’s really shameful the way he’s become a another servile eunuch of that clown Obama. Obscene, really.
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