You know sometimes you walk into a restaurant and you see a couple of people you know. You stroll by the table to say hello and immediately you get that feeling—the one that tells you that you are interrupting something. Something intimate. This isn’t just a dinner. Not just friends out for drinks. This is a date. You are making it awkward.
That’s how we felt when we recently ran into a certain CNBC personality and a well-known financial type. No. Not that one. We’re talking about Liz Claman and Warren Buffett, who we ran into chatting on CNBC as we passed the television on the way to where we keep the whiskey. (Sure it’s only 11 am but we’ve got one of those phantom hangovers where we feel like crap despite only drinking half a bottle of red last night. Hair of the dog that bit us in our dreams.) Those two are mighty close these days.
What was the point of all this? Oh, right. Grandpa Buffett let loose with an interesting figure this morning. According to Buffett, Berkshire-Hathaway spent $24 million on auditing this year, a figure he says would have been closer to $10 million without Sarbanes-Oxley. This is just one, anecdotal data point but still. That’s an enormous cost multiplyer. If SarbOx is costing anything like this with many other companies, we’re looking at a serious wealth transfer because of a regulation whose benefits are hard to quantify. Does anyone really think SarbOx is making investors 2.4 times safer?
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I think Carney exaggerates about how much he drinks. I never see him anywhere on Stone Street.
I will take that as a compliment.
But seriously, we’re thinking of having a semi-regular happy hour with readers. Maybe Ulysses. What do you think? I’m easy to spot these days. Crutches and kilt make me stand out a bit. At least until this Saturday.
Ulysses is too crowded…I’m attempting to bring Brouwers into the fold. Unless that geek with the guitar is there.
Is Liz Claman doing a Maria B. with Warren B’s Todd T?
There seems to be an Oedipal thing going on here — does she dig old guys or what?! It is queasy to see her slurp all over him. Eeeeeeeeeeeeew.
An Oedipus complex is when you kill your father and marry your mother.
you’re lacking basic finance skills. on 80bln? mrkt cap “protected” by sarbox, $10mil means nothing, so you’re 2.4x commentary is useless. compare the $10m with the hundreds fleeced through backdating?
i underdstand your narcissism to have your mug on cnbc, and brown nosing the “wise guys” on the street for this, but the stances defending hedge funds, anti sarbox crowd and backdating are getting tiresome. sing at a different table
take the drinks though. with bess.
@E’tra:
You know what I was referring to — I wasn’t sure how many folks would get the whole Electral corrollary.
Mr. Vandalay, if you’re going to challenge Carney’s finance skills, at least get the easy numbers right. This nifty site called Yahoo!Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=BRK-A) has berkshire’s mkt cap at more than double that $80 bln number.
I suppose this bolsters your “argument” but I lack the patience to get into that.
That’s not a phantom hangover Carney – that’s called withdrawal!
Whaddya mean “hard to quantify?” Check this out:
http://tinyurl.com/2hqhpy
What Buffet didn’t mention is the money he MADE because of SOX compliance!
Whaddya mean “hard to quantify?” Check this out:
http://tinyurl.com/2hqhpy
What Buffet didn’t mention is the money he MADE because of SOX compliance!
i’ve personally worked on $60m or worth of audit projects (that were actually split out as projects, not sustainment) in a $50b LLC company. that $60m could have been spent on somethng of value to consumers right? It goes to no-one really since the corp is an LLC, though i suppose it impacts the parent’s stock price.
there are also ~100 of my position, so the other 99 could have worked on more or less than me.