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On September 24, 2008, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), (BRK.B) and Goldman Sachs (GS) entered into an agreement in which Berkshire Hathaway purchased $5 billion of Goldman’s preferred shares paying a 10% dividend. Berkshire also received warrants granting it the right to buy $5 billion of Goldman Sachs common stock at $115 per share (or 43.5 million shares) through October 1, 2013. Goldman Sachs called the preferred stock for redemption on April 18, 2011 at a premium of 10% over par value, plus accrued and unpaid dividends. As a result, Berkshire Hathaway earned approximately $1.75 billion ($1.25 billion in dividends plus a...

Warren Buffet came, he saw BRK/A trading at $99,000, he took a bath, and decided that this aggression against BRK/A will not stand, man. As a result, after taking a metaphorical bath on BAC, the Octogenarian has just decided to launch a share repurchase program in the company with the massive short S&P put, because "In the opinion of our Board and management, the underlying businesses of Berkshire are worth considerably more than this amount, though any such estimate is necessarily imprecise." In other words, Buffett is slowing starting to realize that he has to put up or shut up,...

C’mon, IRS. “Stop coddling the super rich.� Contrive to successfully extract the taxes they already owe.Mr. Buffett, I barely want to waste my breath on your blatant hypocrisy.And, Mainstream Media (by which I mean the NYT, which ran Buffett’s obnoxious op-ed in the first place), WHERE ARE YOU?From NewsMax: Billionaire investor Warren Buffett triggered a major debate over taxes recently when he wrote in The New York Times that he should be paying more to the federal government. He called on Washington lawmakers to up tax rates on the rich.But it turns out that Buffett’s own company, Berkshire Hathaway, has...

Warren 'Raise My Taxes' Buffett's Company May Owe IRS $1 Billion By Noel Sheppard Created 08/30/2011 - 5:29pm As NewsBusters reported Monday, American media almost completely ignored a report that Warren "Raise My Taxes" Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway has been fighting with the IRS for almost a decade over taxes it owes. On Tuesday, the organization digging into Berkshire Hathaway's numbers, Americans for Limited Government, estimated the total could be as much as $1 billion: Using only publicly-available documents, a certified public accountant (CPA) detailed Berkshire Hathaway’s tax problems to ALG researcher Richard McCarty. Now, the American people have a...

Warren Buffett has swooped in to save the day, this time for Bank of America. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. agreed to invest $5 billion in Bank of America Corp. to help assure investors that the company will not go under. What's with all the recent do gooder deeds? Is this guy considering a run for president in 2012? Probably not. By investing and "bolstering confidence" in Bank of America, Buffett will be rewarded with a handsome $300 million annually. Maybe he can use some of that to donate to his "the rich deserve to be taxed" cause.Already stocks have...

Buffett's Berkshire has agreed to buy 50,000 preferred shares of Bank of America for $5 billion. That means he's paying $100,000 per share. He also has options to buy 700 million. That's 7% dilution for shareholders. Buffett says it's not just a vote of confidence in Bank of America, but in the U.S., according to Becky Quick on CNBC. It's a better deal for Bank of America than Buffett gave to Goldman Sachs in some ways, he says. And get this - he dreamt up the idea to invest in Bank of America yesterday - in the bathtub. Bank of...

The surprise announcement yesterday that NetJets Chairman David Sokol had resigned from Berkshire Hathaway under a cloud of insider trading suspicion produced smiles of satisfaction among many general aviation leaders. When the word of Sokol’s sudden exit spread during a dinner at the Sun ‘n Fun airshow in Lakeland, Fla., last night, one general aviation manufacturing CEO said, “There’s celebrating going on in Wichita and Savannah today.” Sokol cancelled orders for hundreds of business jets built by Cessna and Hawker Beechcraft, both based in Wichita, Kan., and Gulfstream, which is headquartered in Savannah, Ga. He said he did so to...

In a very surprise move, a longtime lieutenant of Warren Buffett, David Sokol, resigned from his position at Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Sokol had been considered a possible successor for Buffett’s post as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett also dropped a bombshell in a letter about Sokol: he said Sokol had purchased shares of Lubrizol, a specialty chemicals company which Berkshire announced it is buying, before Sokol convinced Buffett on the merits of the deal.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has agreed to pay $9bn (£5.6bn) in cash for US chemicals maker Lubrizol, making good on a pledge that he was on the hunt for big acquisitions. Mr Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway company offered $135 a share for Lubrizol, which is based in Ohio but has factories in almost 20 countries. The company expanded into Britain in the 1930s in its first venture outside the US. The deal follows Mr Buffett's near-$30bn acquisition in late 2009 of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of America's biggest railroad companies. The decision also underlines the billionaire's appetite for buying American...

To Warren From The Taxpayers: Eat #@/t You JackassKarl DenningerSeptember 24, 2020 As if Munger's hubris wasn't enough, now we have this: “Sentiment has turned very sour in the last three or four or five months,” the chairman and CEO of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said in an interview broadcast Thursday. “I hope we get over it pretty soon, because it’s not productive,’’ Buffett said. “We will come back regardless of how people feel about Washington, but it is not helpful to have people as unhappy as they are about what’s going on in Washington.” Your businesses stole literal trillions...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) (BRKb.N) on Friday said second-quarter profit fell 40 percent, as declining stock prices depressed the value of his derivative contracts. Operating profit nevertheless soared 73 percent, helped by the takeover of railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp, improvement in insurance underwriting results, and a turnaround in performance at the NetJets corporate plane unit. Net income fell to $1.97 billion, or $1,195 per Class A share, from $3.3 billion, or $2.123, a year earlier. Excluding investments, operating profit rose to $3.07 billion, or $1,866 per share, from $1.78 billion, or...

Moody's stock (MCO) is getting slammed this morning on the shocking news that the SEC has hit it with a "Wells Notice" that could lead to the SEC's preventing the company from acting as a rating agency. How did the market learn about the Wells Notice? Because Moody's was apparently forced to disclose it in its latest SEC filing. (The company tried to hide the news deep in the 10Q, even burying it within a broader paragraph, but investors found it). So here's our question: If the Wells Notice is material enough for Moody's to have to disclose it in...

Hawker Beechcraft announced Monday that fractional ownership company NetJets has canceled a "significant" number of aircraft it had on order. The cancellations will reduce Hawker Beechcraft's backlog by $2.6 billion and represent 90 percent of the aircraft that NetJets has on order with Hawker Beechcraft. The planes were to have been delivered over several years beginning in 2011. So far this year, NetJets has canceled 12 aircraft it had on order and deferred delivery of all jets it was scheduled to receive this year and next until the end of 2010. Hawker Beechcraft has said that NetJets wasn't expected to...

Demand for private jets is way down and NetJets will lay off almost 500 pilots as a result -- almost 20% of its staff of 3,000 pilots. because of a decrease in demand. NetJets is a unit of investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway

It seems my previous article has garnered a bit of criticism from someone I hold in rather high regard, indicating that perhaps I have been less than clear in my criticism. Let me be clear: There is nothing wrong with making a lot of money, and leveraging your wealth into making even more money! It doesn't surprise me that those with lots of money get "special dispensation" in the form of conversations with Treasury Secretaries and other members of the government. The "little people" - that is you and I - will never get that sort of treatment, simply because...

The attack on Warren Buffett continues. The latest to jump on the pile is Karl Denninger. He makes the charge that Buffett may have taken advantage of taxpayers, when buying his stake in Goldman Sachs: ...was he really just making a bet? The evidence says otherwise; Warren's statements both at the time and later one made clear that he had every expectation, and perhaps even inside information, that the government would not allow these firms to fail. That is, he didn't make a bet - he jumped in front of the taxpayer, a form of legal "front running", to garner...

February 3, 2006: The DOJ indicted ex-AIG honcho Maurice Greenberg's former execs in a probe of complex reinsurance deals. General Re, a crown jewel in the portfolio of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway had three of its senior execs indicted. Christian Milton, former head of AIG's massive reinsurance operations, indicted on 13 counts of aiding and abetting securities fraud; former General Re CEO Ronald Ferguson, former CFO Elizabeth Monrad and Robert Graham, assistant general counsel. "The scheme was designed to mislead analysts and the investing public," said an assistant US attorney. Federal prosecutors said AIG paid General Re $5.2M — via...

Moody’s downgrades Berkshire Hathaway By Justin Baer in New York Published: April 9 2009 00:41 | Last updated: April 9 2009 00:41 Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway lost its triple-A grade from Moody’s Investors Service, the very ratings firm in which the billionaire holds a 20 per cent stake. The downgrade, which follows Fitch Ratings’ one-notch cut last month, comes as Berkshire seeks to rebound from its worst year since the “Sage of Omaha” took control of the former textiles maker in 1965. Moody’s dropped Berkshire two notches, to double-A2. “Today’s rating actions reflect the impact on Berkshire’s key businesses of...

<p>WASHINGTON - At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute at least $1 million each to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups, to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up during the last three decades.</p>

FAIRFIELD, Conn. — Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is buying $3 billion worth of General Electric preferred shares, even as the diversified conglomerate is preparing to sell at least $12 billion worth of common stock to the public. GE says Berkshire Hathaway will buy $3 billion of perpetual preferred stock in a private offering. Such stock carries a dividend of 10 percent and is callable, at a 10 percent premium, after three years. Berkshire also received warrants to buy $3 billion worth of common shares at $22.25 each over five years. GE says that the Berkshire funds will boost its capital...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) on Tuesday said it will receive a $5 billion investment from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) (BRKb.N), a vote of confidence for the Wall Street bank from perhaps the world's best-known investor. Berkshire will buy $5 billion of perpetual preferred stock that carries a 10 percent dividend. It also will receive warrants to buy $5 billion of common stock at $115 per share, exercisable within five years. Goldman also said it plans to sell at least $2.5 billion of common stock. It announced the offerings after earlier this week announcing...

March 28, 2005 .....investigators on three continents are examining Buffet's Berkshire insurance affiliates .......the company is in the unfamiliar position of having to defend its integrity. Berkshire insurance affiliates are involved in what investigators describe as possible financial manipulation at insurance giants like AIG and Zurich Financial Services Group. Investigators are trying to determine the extent of senior executives who oversaw insurance operations that sold products at the core of international regulatory scrutiny. The broad investigation into the insurance industry has already brought down top executives including Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chief executive of AIG.........regulators are looking at a...

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is reaching into its deep pockets to give a steadying hand to Constellation Energy Group Inc. and, at the same time, grab a bargain. Berkshire's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. said Thursday it will buy Baltimore-based Constellation for $4.7 billion and give it an immediate $1 billion infusion after shares of the nation's largest wholesale power seller plummeted and liquidity concerns had analysts worried it would go out of business. "Obviously we're in unprecedented times," MidAmerican President and CEO Gregory Abel said. "Liquidity and solvency issues are a top priority for many companies. We don't have...

Buffett's Insurance Bust Ruthie Ackerman, 02.29.08, 9:30 PM ET All good things must come to an end -- even billionaire investor Warren Buffett's success in the insurance business. On Friday in Buffett's eagerly awaited annual letter to shareholders, he acknowledged 2007 was a good year, thanks to Berkshire Hathaway's stable insurance operations in a disaster-free 12 months, but he's not expecting a repeat. "That party is over,” he wrote. “It is a certainty that insurance-industry profit margins, including ours, will fall significantly in 2008. Prices are down, and exposures inexorably rise.” He predicted that even with another catastrophe-free year, the...

When Warren Buffett so much as scratches his nose, the investment world sits up and takes notice. So the Buffettologists will be all over the latest acquisition by the world’s smartest investor. While his rivals were still digesting their sprouts, Mr Buffett announced on the evening of Christmas Day that Berkshire Hathaway was paying $4.5 billion (£2.25 billion) for majority control of Marmon Holdings, an industrial conglomerate owned by the Pritzker family of Chicago. Outside his insurance company investments, this is Mr Buffett’s biggest deal yet. Given Berkshire’s investment preferences, there were few surprises in the deal. Marmon’s products are...

Mutual funds that have been longtime Berkshire Hathaway investors are decamping. Warren Buffett draws as many gee-whiz headlines as ever these days. But the Berkshire Hathaway (nyse: BRKA) mystique may be wearing thin among longtime devotees who know the company best--several solid mutual funds that have held its stock for ages. One is the sterling Sequoia Fund, bound in a tight relationship with Buffett for four decades. Since the start of 2005 Sequoia has unloaded $650 million of Berkshire shares, shrinking their weight in Sequoia's portfolio from 35% to 26%. Wallace Weitz shares a hometown with Buffett and runs Weitz...

Billionaire Warren Buffett's holding company bought nearly 2.8 million shares of Dow Jones & Co. earlier this year before Rupert Murdoch sealed his deal to buy The Wall Street Journal's publisher. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. filed its quarterly summary of its $61.1 billion portfolio of US stocks with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. The filing did not state how much Berkshire paid for the Dow Jones shares. Berkshire bought the Dow Jones shares sometime in April, May or June, so it could have paid as little as $34 a share. Berkshire held 2.78 million shares of Dow Jones...

Help is not on the way to Darfur, Berkshire shareholders say. NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Here's hoping that Warren Buffett isn't with us as chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for much longer, or at least that he has a change of heart. The world will be better off. Nearly a year after Buffett pledged to give $37 billion of his personal wealth to charity, the 76-year-old and his shareholder flock at Berkshire (BRKA109,150.00, -25.00, 0.0%) shot down a series of do-gooder proposals that would have required the company to spare some profits in the name of social responsibility, and...

Mr. Buffett also defended his charitable contribution to organizations that support women's reproductive rights, such as Planned Parenthood. "Men set the rules for a lot of years, and I think it's wonderful that women can make reproductive choices," Mr. Buffett replied, as shareholders applauded and cheered. "I think it's a terrific organization," Mr. Buffett added, referring to Planned Parenthood. "I really think it's too bad that for millenia, women not only in the U.S. but all over the world, have had involuntary bearing of babies."

Excerpt - SEATTLE - Warren Buffett, the world's second richest man, is starting this year to give much of his wealth to charity, with the bulk of over $40 million in Berkshire Hathaway stock going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In a letter dated Monday, Buffett, who is chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., tells Bill and Melinda Gates that the first annual donation would go to the foundation this year. It's expected to total about $1.5 billion. Up until now, all the money given away by the Gates Foundation has come from Bill and Melinda Gates. The money...

A leading U.S. consumer group Monday accused Geico Corp. of using consumers' education backgrounds and occupations as criteria in setting auto insurance rates, resulting in discrimination against minorities and lower-income people. The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) charged that the No. 4 U.S. auto insurer, has adopted rating methods and underwriting guidelines in 44 states that directly tie rates to education and occupation. Geico, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK), the insurance and investment company controlled by billionaire Warren Buffett, rejected the charges. It called them "an offensive attempt to link fundamentally fair and actuarially sound industry practices with...

In his annual letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett acknowledged that his bet against U.S. currency had collectively cost them almost $1 billion. Buffet wrote, "My views on America’s long-term problem in respect to trade imbalances, which I have laid out in previous reports, remain unchanged. My conviction, however, cost Berkshire $955 million pre-tax in 2005. ..." In recent years, Buffett has increasingly used his platform as an extraordinarily skillful mutual fund manger to criticize the economic performance of the country under President Bush. In last year's letter he announced that he had been significantly increasing his...

Warren Buffett, the second-richest man in America, is $1.8 billion poorer this year due to bad bets - also losing billions for his loyal following......considered by some as the world's greatest investor, has suffered an embarrassing 2.36 percent loss in returns on his huge Berkshire Hathaway empire in the past year. The pricey shares skidded from their peak last December of $91,200 apiece to $87,490 yesterday.....a drop of nearly $4.7 billion in just three months for his shareholders. Berkshire Hathaway - built largely on insurance businesses and blue chip stocks - got hurt from insurance losses and bad bets on...

New York, Nov. 5 (Reuters): Warren Buffett-run Berkshire Hathaway Inc on Friday posted a 48 per cent decline in quarterly profit — to the lowest level since 2001, hurt by nearly $3 billion of losses from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The company also reduced its stake in foreign currency contracts to $16.5 billion on September 30 from $21.5 billion three months earlier. Buffett has bet against the dollar since 2002 amid concern that high US trade and budget deficits might cause non-US investors to pull money from the country. Third-quarter net income for Berkshire, whose largest business is insurance, fell...

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is expected to testify in the trial of his investment firm's lawsuit accusing the Internal Revenue Service of denying it $16.3 million in tax deductions. The trial began Monday in U.S. District Court after some three years of legal wrangling between Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and the IRS. The lawsuit alleges the IRS made an "erroneous, wrongful and illegal" interpretation of the U.S. Tax Code when it denied the deductions.The IRS disallowed the deductions after tracing $750 million in borrowed money to purchase stocks in several companies, including Coca-Cola Co., Time-Warner and Wells Fargo & Co., according...

Bill Gates Buys 100 Berkshire Hathaway Class A Shrs DOW JONES NEWSWIRES September 16, 2005 6:07 p.m.

Six months ago, the value of the U.S. dollar was on the firing line as it plunged to a record low vs. the euro. Amid fears that a united Europe would surmount the spendthrift United States as a safe haven for financial assets in a tumultuous world, investors worldwide -- led by noted Nebraska sourpuss Warren Buffett -- heaped scorn on our currency and scolded U.S. lawmakers to get the federal deficit under control. But a funny thing happened to all those dollar bears. Their contempt for U.S. economic freedoms hasn’t amounted to a hill of bill of beans, and...

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/newsfinder/pulseone.asp?siteid=mktw&guid={064C1C55-5EA9-4481-9D20-8E9F19AB420B}&dist=bnb 11:46am 06/06/05 General Re exec pleads guilty in AIG -transaction - WSJ (BRK.B, BRK.A) By Carolyn Pritchard SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- An executive at Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s (BRK.B) (BRK.A) General Re unit has pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal conspiracy in relation to the company's transaction with American International Group Inc. (AIG) , the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site Monday, citing two unnamed people familiar with the matter. John Houldsworth, who headed up General Re's reinsurance unit in Dublin, reportedly faces up to five years in prison for his role in a 2001 transaction between...

OMAHA, Neb. (Reuters) - Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK-A - News; NYSE:BRK-B - News) lost $310 million in the first quarter from betting against the U.S. dollar, but has nevertheless maintained its roughly $21 billion stake against the greenback, the billionaire said on Saturday. ... Omaha-based Berkshire's stake in foreign currency contracts total "a little more than $21 billion," compared with $21.4 billion spread among 12 currencies at year end, Buffett said. That bet backfired in the first quarter, and even now it costs about 5 percent fewer dollars to buy euros than on Dec. 31. Berkshire's currency bets...

Berkshire reinsurance deals queried Agreements helped Gerling Global Re manipulate resultsBy Alistair Barr, MarketWatch Last Update: 12:22 PM ET April 26, 2005 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Berkshire Hathaway, embroiled in widening investigations into so-called finite reinsurance, courted controversy surrounding the products at least a decade ago, according to reports by state regulators. Finite transactions between some of Berkshire's (BRKA: news, chart, profile) (BRKB: news, chart, profile) main insurance units and a top reinsurer helped that company distort its financial statements, according to a New York Insurance Department examination report written in September 1999. The report was about Gerling Global Re,...

11:14am 03/05/05 Warren Buffett confesses he 'struck out' in 2004 (BRKA, BRKB) By Thomas Middleton NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Warren Buffett, renowned investor and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA) , said he "struck out" in 2004 by failing to make acquisitions that would have increased earnings. In his company's 40th annual report Saturday, the 74-year-old CEO said Berkshire Hathaway increased its net worth by $8.3 billion last year. That increased the company's per-share book value by 10.5%, which fell short of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, which posted a 10.9% return for 2004. Buffett said he found "very...

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was elected Tuesday to serve on the board of directors of prominent investment company Berkshire Hathaway. In doing so, Gates will serve as an advisor to longtime friend and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. In a statement, Gates said he hoped his years of experience at Microsoft would prove to be of value to Berkshire's shareholders. "I am delighted and honored to have been asked to serve on the board of this very successful company," Gates said. Gates also serves on the board of Bothell, Wash.-based biotech company Icos. Despite being close to Gates, Buffett has...

By John Berlau © 2004 Insight/News World Communications Inc. Though President Bush constantly is criticized and attacked by Democratic partisans for pursuing policies that benefit "the wealthy," why are so many of what would be considered America's superrich his political opponents? In addition to the Hollywood mega-elite, which since the death of Sam Goldwyn have opposed the GOP mainly for cultural reasons, billionaire businessmen have stepped forward calling for the defeat of Bush or his policies. Most prominent has been speculator George Soros, who has pledged to raise $75 million to defeat Bush, given millions to Democratic Bush-bashing groups such...

Pro-Lifers Ensure Pampered Chef Profits No Longer Support Abortion By Candi Cushman Pro-life moms working for The Pampered Chef — the nation's largest direct-sales kitchenware company — have scored a major victory against the abortion industry by stopping pro-abortion donations from one of the world's largest megacorporations, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Headed by billionaire Warren Buffett, one of the abortion industry's top financiers, Berkshire is a conglomerate of corporations including The Pampered Chef, Dairy Queen and Fruit of the Loom. For years, the company has funneled millions of its profits into The Buffett Foundation, which in turn bankrolls several "reproductive rights"...

<p>Berkshire Hathaway, the hugely successful, Nebraska-based company led by Warren Buffett, recently announced an end to its program for charitable giving, and in a way that is big news.</p> <p>The program was an object of adoration for years, not least because it allowed Class A shareholders to designate where they wanted their portion of the company's charity to go. It seemed so democratic, so enlightened compared with the usual corporate-charity model: allowing an executive committee to pick a few charities on behalf of all shareholders. And yet we should be glad that Berkshire's program has ended. It was a bad idea in the first place.</p>

Warren Buffett has drawn criticism in the past for supporting pro-choice causes, but it never affected Berkshire Hathaway's charitable giving—that is, until Cindy Coughlon, a 34-year-old stay-at-home mom in Peoria, Ariz., came along. Now, as a result of her campaign against pro-choice donations, the most powerful man in business has terminated Berkshire's entire contribution program, which distributed nearly $200 million over the past two decades to institutions ranging from schools to groups on either side of the abortion debate. The unusual program—call it a charitable dividend—allowed Berkshire shareholders to designate $18 per share annually for up to three charities of...

This is the text of an email sent out today from Pampered Chef's founder, Doris Christopher. Dear Kitchen Consultants: I have shared with you my pride in being a part of the Berkshire Hathaway family of businesses. I knew that this was the kind of family where The Pampered Chef would thrive and grow for years to come. I have also shared with you my feelings of respect for Warren Buffett. Today, I am even more proud to call Warren my mentor, leader and friend. This week I went to Warren with a heavy heart. I told him that many...

Today Berkshire-Hathaway has announced that it will stop its shareholder-designated contributions program. Quote from the Berkshire-Hathaway press release: "Berkshire Hathaway has terminated its shareholder-designated contributions program, which has distributed approximately $197 million since it was begun in 1981. This program has allowed holders of Berkshire’s A shares to designate a per-share sum for the company to contribute to as many as three charities, the only requirement being that the designee have 501(c)(3) status. The program thus allowed a wide diversity of donations, some of them controversial but all outside the control of Berkshire." The entire press release can be viewed...

(AgapePress) - A growing number of Christian, pro-life mothers are leaving lucrative careers with a national kitchenware company because of the new owner's support of abortion. "The Pampered Chef" is one of the nation's largest and fastest-growing kitchenware companies. The company, founded in 1980 by professing Christian and stay-at-home mother Doris Christopher, has been driven mostly by stay-at-home moms who sell the products from home. The company boasts more than 67,000 "Kitchen Consultants" and sales of $700 million annually. But now, according to Citizen magazine, many Christian mothers are walking away from the company because Pampered Chef's new owner, billionaire...

Warren Buffett, who's made his billions guessing the future of the market, is offering a much scarier kind of forecast these days. The "Oracle of Omaha" has been using recent public appearances to predict new terrorist attacks on the United States. At Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in May, typically a confab of cone-head value investors terrorized by lofty price-to-earnings ratios, Buffett declared that detonation of a nuclear device in an American city—"$1 trillion nuclear event" in Manhattan, for example—was inevitable. "We're going to have something in the way of a major nuclear event in this country. It will happen. Whether...