We’re returning to all the classic DealBreaker themes today—Plotkin, Cuban, Ken Lay, horny traders—so might as well bring our old friend Warren Buffett back into the mix.
The occasion? Last Saturday Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway announced giant first quarter earnings. And what’s wrong with that? We’ll get to that in a minute. But we just want to note how agile DealBreaker is—not only can we bash him for being charitable, we can bash Buffett for being profitable too. Moving along, here’s JerryBower on how Buffett profits from his hypocrisy:
Last Saturday, when Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway company revealed that its boffo first quarter was due partly to high returns from its investment in corporate jets, the cycle of irony was finally complete. Buffett, a well known critic of executive perks, has been particularly hard on CEOs who use private jets — that is, until he had his company buy one. At least he had the good humor to name it “The Indefensible.”
More where that came from through the link below.
The Warren Buffett Paradox [National Review]
Posted by charles janeway , Aug 11, 2006 10:45PM
I judge a man by his actions, not by his words. Netjets is a good company with in my opinion the top fractional ownership program out there. As long as the Citation X takes off from Teterboro on time, I could care less about what Buffett says.
Posted by Michael Schneider , Aug 13, 2006 4:38PM
One should seperate personal beliefs from investments generally. You can be totally against smoking and buy tobacco stocks, be against war and buy defense stocks, be against drugs and buy drug stocks without being a hypocrite in any respect. I suppose that also applies to owning a company. Most companies have pluses and minuses when it comes to being "socially responsible" and it changes a lot- but even if they sell a bad product it doesn't make you a hypocrite to invest. There may be exceptions to this but I just don't see selling corporate jets as being one of them. Value investors who buy out of favor companies often buy into companies that are at least temporarily seen as bad or socially irresponsible companies. Many items on Warren Buffett and his holdings are at www.Barrelomoney.com.