Berkshire Hathaway
Buffett donates Berkshire stock to 2 charities - posted by Steven Wevodau
By Josh Funk, AP Business Writer
Warren Buffett donates Berkshire stock worth nearly $3.6 million to 2 unnamed charities
One donation of 676 Class B shares was made in September and a donation of 595 Class B shares was made in December. Class B shares sold for $2,822 Monday afternoon.
Buffett did not immediately respond to questions about the donations e-mailed to his Omaha office.
Buffett has previously said all of his Berkshire stock will go to charities over time.
After these latest donations, Buffett held 2,018,997 Class B Berkshire shares and 350,000 Class A shares, which were selling for $85,500.
Warren Buffett: Barack Obama Will Help the Economy, But Don’t Expect Short-Term Miracles - Steven Wevodau
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Warren Buffett says “you couldn’t have anybody better in charge” for the economy than Barack Obama, but warns “it’s going to take time” before things get better.
In an interview with Tom Brokaw for Dateline NBC, Buffett says there’s a lot of fear everywhere as the country faces “an economic Pearl Harbor .. something it hasn’t faced since World War II.”
Buffett predicts that Obama’s plan for a massive stimulus program will help, but not right away.
“We’re gonna have a medicine coming in a dosage we’ve never seen before … but it won’t have immediate impact … It takes time for it to hit the economy in real force. So people should not expect miracles in February or March or April. That isn’t gonna happen.”
Buffett thinks Obama will make sure the American people know that there will be some pain and sacrifices to be made. “That’s exactly what he’s gonna say, ’cause it’s the truth. And he’s smart enough to know it’s the truth … and he’s the kind of person who’s going to tell you the truth. So, I think he’s the ideal president for it. But that’s not because I think he can wave a magic wand.”
While Buffett doesn’t rule out the possibility that unemployment will rise to double digits before the end of the year, he doesn’t expect the current economic downturn to be as severe as the Great Depression of the 1930s.
And he remains very optimistic about the country’s ability to come through troubled times. “The truth is we’ve done it before and we’ll do it again … But it’s not always a smooth ride.”
“In the end,” Buffett says, “since 1776 it’s never paid to bet against America.”
Morningstar analysts name Buffett best CEO of 2008
POSTED BY STEVEN WEVODAU
Associated Press - January 9, 2009 6:25 AM ET
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Investment research firm Morningstar named billionaire Warren Buffett the best chief executive of 2008 for his leadership of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Paul Larson, who edits a Morningstar newsletter, says Buffett was chosen because of the key investments Berkshire made in 2008 at a time when most investors fled the market because of economic turmoil.
Berkshire invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs and $3 billion in General Electric, and both companies promised to pay Berkshire a 10% annual dividend.
Berkshire’s bid to acquire Constellation Energy failed, but Berkshire walked away with $593 million cash and 20 million shares of Constellation stock. Plus, Berkshire receives 14% interest on its initial $1 billion Constellation investment.
Why Dilbert’s Creator Doesn’t Trust Warren Buffett - posted by Steven Wevodau
Dilbert creator Scott Adams doesn’t trust Warren Buffett’s October call to buy U.S. stocks hammered during Wall Street’s worst year in decades.
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AP
Scott Adams poses with a two-dimensional Dilbert in this 2006 file photograph.
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Over the weekend, Barron’s ran a profile of Adams, whose daily comic strip about dysfunctional offices and managers everywhere has been making cubicle-dwellers smile for 20 years.
Adams also writes about the economy and the stock market, among other things, in his own blog on Dilbert.com.
Now the real-world economic downturn is affecting Dilbert’s fictional high-tech employer.
Barron’s says Adams thinks capitalism will end up in the dustbin of history because modern technology allows crooks and market manipulators to destroy vast amounts of capital in very little time.
While Adams does not think Buffett is one of those crooks, Barron’s reveals that Adams doesn’t even trust the Oracle of Omaha.
Washington editor Jim McTague writes:
Adams “just worries that the master’s objectivity has been clouded by do-good impulses. ‘His social conscience makes his motives suspect. He plans to give all of his money away to charity. He’s a very liberal guy. So when he buys stock when the country is panicking, it might be for another reason,’ like rescuing the market, Adams contends.
Barron’s notes that Adams is suspicious of money managers in general, after he “lost a bundle following advice during the tech bubble” of the late 1990s. (That advice, of course, didn’t come from Warren Buffett.)
Adams tells Barron’s he’s recently started moving some his money into stock ETFs, diversifying from the tax-free muni bonds that sheltered him during the recent storm. This time around, however, he’s making all the decisions himself.
Buffett certainly wouldn’t argue with that approach.
Interesting Insurance Stocks For 2009 (BRK.A, TRV, CB) - Steven Wevodau
January 02, 2009 | by Eric Fox
American International Group (NYSE:AIG), the grand daddy of the insurance sector, was forced to seek a credit line from the government of more than $100 billion to meet its obligations. Even storied name Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A) saw its shares sell off to $78,000 a share, a five-year low, as investors questioned a large derivative position the company took on.
So what do investors have to look forward to in 2009?
Industry Outlook
There is sure to be more pain as insurers’ investment portfolios are marked to market every quarter. There has been talk from regulatory authorities about relaxing the accounting rules that require mark to market accounting, but so far nothing concrete has been announced.
On the good side, one of the side effects of the financial crisis was an aversion to risk taking, which led to capacity leaving the market. Evan Greenberg, the CEO of Ace (NYSE:ACE) declared during the third quarter conference that the end of the soft market in insurance had arrived. Also, the hurricane season was fairly benign in 2008, with only two named storms hitting the Gulf Coast during the period.
Look for some insurers to purchase banks, so they can qualify for funds under the Capital Purchase Plan of the TARP in 2009. So far at least three insurers have announced an intention to go this route to boost capital ratios, including Hartford Financial Services Group (NYSE:HIG), Genworth Financial (NYSE:GNW) and Lincoln National (NYSE:LNC).
Valuations for the industry are at rock bottom as measured by price-to-book, but this analysis requires that an investor put faith in the value of the assets, or the denominator of the equation. It may some time until investor faith is restored in this measure due to the large writeoffs that have occurred to date.
Travelers (NYSE:TRV), Allstate (NYSE:ALL) and Chubb (NYSE:CB) are some large cap names that warrant further investigation as investors search for names to play the eventual recovery in the sector.
To learn more about investing in this sector, check out our Insurance Industry Handbook.
By Eric Fox
Faith, Doubt, and Warren Buffett
POSTED BY STEVEN WEVODAU
Posted By: Alex Crippen | Executive Producer
cnbc.com
| 15 Dec 2008 | 07:21 AM ET
It’s been a difficult year for the Warren Buffett faithful. Core beliefs are being tested.
Stock prices have plunged as the government struggles to contain the damage from what appears to be the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Berkshire Hathaway is no exception. In late November, the Class A shares traded as low as $74,100 each. That was over 51 percent below their December 2007 all-time intraday high of $151,650.
After a rebound that took the stock back into six-digit territory, it is once again trading below $100,000.
Berkshire’s net earnings plunged 77 percent in the third quarter, as Buffett’s long-term wager on the health of global stocks racked up billions in short-term paper losses.
Bloomberg reports that bets against Buffett, in the form of short selling of Berkshire stock, rose to a six-year high last month.
Reuters asks, Is Warren Buffett Losing His Touch? The Wall Street Journal urges him to “get a new crystal ball.”
Even page views for this blog are slowing down a bit. (Maybe I just haven’t been doing enough posts!)
Buffett isn’t worried. “It’s happened before,” he tells Fox. “A capitalist systen overshoots .. but it works very well over time.”
Almost two months ago, he told the world he’s enthusiastically buying U.S. stocks for his own account, picking up a “slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.” But over those two months, the benchmark S&P 500 stock index has dropped another 8 percent.
Faith says that just as we know that winter won’t last forever, we also know that stocks will eventually bloom again, too. Buy now while the nights are long and the storm rages, even if it is a “perfect” storm.
Doubt replies that this time, it’s different. The financial markets don’t move as reliably as the Sun and the Earth. Spring looks like it will be very, very late this time around. Things could get worse, and they will never be as good as they were.
For many Buffett followers, being “greedy when others are fearful” is a matter of faith, an acceptance of the idea that they should stay on the ‘right’ path despite all the nagging doubts that they’re heading in the ‘wrong’ direction.
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