This is a big extrapolation of intent from a single paragraph of a very long, carefully-crafted letter. Absent from this analysis are all the grafs where Buffett explained why the bailout was the correct course of action.
Right. I think Buffett talked about this only because it explains why Clayton Homes won't be able to lend as much in the near future. Buffett obviously thinks the bailout was best for the country and for Berkshire in the long run, but he had to explain these numbers to shareholders (from the table on page 11/12 of the 2008 letter):
And Buffett doesn't single out bailout money. He just says that the crisis makes government-backed entities, such as FDIC-insured banks, safer for lenders. Not really surprising.
Quote:
"Funders that have access to any sort of government guarantee -- banks with FDIC-insured deposits, large entities with commercial paper backed by the Federal Reserve, and others who are using imaginitive methods (or lobbying skills) to come under the government's umbrella -- have money costs that are minimal."
And then this article where he complains about how that very bailout is hurting one of his businesses??
It sounds very hypocritical to me and very selfish in a time when the economy is crumbling due to these /exact/ same kinds of selfish decisions on the part of financial warlocks -- not wizards -- warlocks.
Don't tell congress the bailout is the right thing, then complain that it hurts "good" businesses. If he believes what he said, he shouldn't have bought sachs and he shouldn't have been saying it's the right thing to do.
I guess that's the point. Buffett's word has lost value. What does he believe? Who is he trying to help? he bought oil at the top. His stock is at 2003 levels, half what it was at it's peak. BRK.A is worth less today than it was in 1998.
Look, I used to love Buffett. Read the Warren Buffett way, read this old yellow book he wrote in the 70's about value investing. Studied him. Modeled him.
And now... now I don't even know what he believes. His behavior of late is uncharacteristic of him and I'm disappointed in the legend.
1. It's not inconceivable for him to simultaneously think that a) Sachs was a good investment, b) the bailout is the right thing overall, but c) it introduces some issues that cause suboptimal performance elsewhere in his portfolio.
2. I don't see this little snippet as him complaining so much as explaining the moral hazard that the bailout has introduced.
3. Buffet operates on a very long time scale, so I'm not sure it's useful to say that "lately" his behavior has been uncharacteristic. Let's review in a decade or two.
4. You sound like you're having a crisis of faith. It's going to be ok :)
You are right on all your points, I don't disagree. That's exactly what it is, A crisis of faith.
I don't know ... I had hope in Obama, not faith, but hope and he's disappointing me. What change is he bringing? He's exacerbating problems, not fixing them.
There's no one to trust anymore. I didn't trust them before and for good reason, look what they did. I still trusted Buffett though, but now I'm losing that...
It just seems like the rational decisions are getting squashed.
It's like all these decisions are anti-evolutionary. We want the bad ideas to die. We want good ideas to thrive. We just continue to believe and spout lies around and eat it like porridge. It's gross. It makes me feel dirty. It's wrong. It's disgusting really. I'm ashamed at what this country that I love has done to the world. Ashamed.
Look, I love America. I love this place. Every single one of us won the lottery being born here. We didn't choose to be born here anymore than a poverty stricken child chose to be born into that.
The problem is that we won this lottery and now we've squandered it all away on fat cars, fat houses, fat bodies... We've lied to the world and ourselves for greed. For more imaginary money. Stealing. We should be punished. We should feel the pain of our wrongs so that we don't do it again.
Instead, here's some ice cream and a nice corporate jet, courtesy of hard working tax payers.
A crisis of faith... I guess you could call it that yeah...
> I had hope in Obama, not faith, but hope and he's disappointing me. What change is he bringing? He's exacerbating problems, not fixing them.
It's been two months. Real change takes years. Give him some time.
I'm not a huge fan of the bailout either, but I think that just getting rid of all the claims of executive privilege and putting qualified people in office and trying to run the government with more transparency are huge steps forwards. Think of it this way: we know where the bailout money is going, if you bother to pay attention to the net. Would Bush even have allowed public debate?
PJ, Obama has been in office only 30 some days. Would you expect the new Yahoo CEO to reinvent the company in 30 days? Could you build a solid enterprise level application in 30 days? Could you double your current monthly revenue in 30 days?
No. No and No. Then how in the world can one person change the lives of 300M people (or maybe 6 billion) over 30 days?
Seriously what do you expect? Be patient and work on your startup and try to create jobs from it. The money you will generate will allow your employees to purchase more goods, allowing some local business to sustain, allowing those business owners to pay their employees, allowing those employees to pay for their education and so on....
Can you give an example? Because that runs contrary to all my experience. I've worked in enterprise most of my career and I can honestly say that "Hello World" is a 6 month timeline (i.e. that is the innate overhead in doing almost anything).
It would take 30 days to simply meet all the required people and work out what they needed. Let alone build, test and all the other things you need to do (even leaving aside non-core-dev tasks like signoffs, infrastructure, deploy, train, rollout, etc).
(In fact, it generally takes a lot longer than that, but for the sake of argument).
Well, my startup is a web platform company. As an example, one of our customers was, as you say, getting applications turned around in 6 months start to finish. Within 2 months after buying our product, one person at the company built 3 applications in 2 months by himself. That was a nationwide car insurance company. I'm sure you've seen their commercials on TV.
Another example. A major car company in the u.s. had a legacy system built on an old mainframe. This system managed peer reviews for different manufacturing plants. The customer migrated this entire system in one month -- including going through the learning curve.
Another example, I myself built a system to help a local small business manage their entire business online /and/ expand their business model to include an additional revenue stream. Total time, start to finish, including requirements gathering, design, and construction: 150 hours.
So yes, it does run quite contrary to what most people believe about application development. It's a paradigm shift and it's real.
Well I wasn't saying it wasn't feasible - just contrary to all my experience. Also, there is probably the issue that we define what classes as enterprise differently.
I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about a paradigm shift though - Are you talking about simply building things quickly? or another shift that is making this possible?
I know, was kind of funny that you used that to make the point. I understand it. It's usually true.
The paradigm shift is one where development is moving away from desktop based environments like Eclipse and Visual Studio to web based development environments that automate the majority of tasks from the database layer to the front end. To build an enterprise system anymore, developers need nothing but a browser.
And yes, when you said "solid enterprise application" I was wondering what you meant by both solid and enterprise. So no, I couldn't build SAP in a month, but I or really any individual now could build a system that impacts everyone in the organization and scales to support them automatically.
It's really intersting how things are changing faster over time with the exponential impacts of multiple technologies coming together into one point of entry. I'm not sure if any of this is making sense. I don't want to get too work related here, I come here to distract myself so my subconscious can do its job and I entertain myself.
I do get pretty crazy about these topics. Sometimes too crazy.
The way to build a solid enterprise app in 30 days is to build a Web 2.0 app that solves an enterprise problem in 30 days, and then spend 5 years marketing it as "enterprisey". ;-)
But thats the problem. Obama has already changed the lives of the 300M people in this country or at least helped in the process. The stimulus bill that he helped pass has permanently expanded the US federal government. His budget will go even farther in that direction.
With all due respect, what did you really expect from him? He ran on a platform of supporting the bailout and expanding the role and scope of the federal government.
So, what did I expect from him? Change.
What has he delivered? More of the status quo, big spending, bad decisions, and an extreme lack of long range vision. Instead, he's solving acute problems by putting the younger generation in even more debt. He has blown the budget deficit from $500B to over a trillion. That's not change, that more of the same.
> And then this article where he complains about how that very bailout is hurting one of his businesses??
As someone has already pointed out, if you read the paragraph in the context of the letter, he wasn't so much 'complaining' as he was 'explaining a bad result for Clayton Homes'. And he is right, it's hard to compete with the government when it comes to borrowing costs. He is also right that it'll be hard to wean companies off this support. He states very clearly, however, that he still thinks the bailouts were both necessarily and the best course of action.
> Who is he trying to help?
Himself of course. Part of Buffett's appeal is that he usually doesn't do it by playing dirty.
> BRK.A is worth less today than it was in 1998.
No, it's priced today at what it was priced in 1998. Per share book value (value off assets per share) is still 89% higher than it was in 1998. In fact, price-to-book-value is less than 1 at the moment, meaning every dollar you pay for a share actually gets you slightly more than a dollar in assets.
Look, I used to love Buffett. Read the Warren Buffett way, read this old yellow book he wrote in the 70's about value investing. Studied him. Modeled him.
What 'old yellow book' is that? As far as I know, Buffett hasn't written a book. You might be thinking of The Intelligent Investor; he's written the introduction for an edition of that one.
Regarding your larger point: I don't think anyone claims that the entire recession was due to the fact that loans were made or homes were bought. The recession was due to the prices at which these activities took place. It's not hypocritical to say that, for example, GE was overpriced at $30, but it's cheap at $10.
And I would take issue with the idea that the current crisis is due to anything 'selfish'. It's centered on a highly subsidized market, which was designed to give people homes, not make the government rich. The fact that this well-meaning behavior backfired so dramatically is only obvious in hindsight, or to anybody who reads much history at all.
You're right, I apologize. It wasn't written by him. It's called "Value Investing Made Easy" and is /about/ him, but not written by him. can't see when it was written. I checked it out from the library years ago and it was totally worn out, so my impression may not match the copyright.
I would disagree with your comments though. I would say this crisis is about overvaluing assets, irrational exuberance fueled by greed, and improper lending practices by individuals and businesses that can easily pass the buck to someone in another country.
And I would take issue with the idea that the current crisis is due to anything 'selfish'.
Sounds like the claim of someone working in finance. If you're referring to CRA then just follow the money and you will see CRA accounted for little over a third of all subprime loans. AND, anyone in finance should know it wasn't just the subprime deals that went down. The entire mortgage market went down. CRA being the culprit is a long-shot at best, but please elaborate if I've got you wrong.
With regard to the well-meaning behavior, well, it wasn't just well-meaning behavior just like it wasn't just CRA. There was plenty of selfishness. People on the street couldn't get enough paper for packaging securities. The money on the commission for selling this was huge. You're crazy if you think anyone on the street will turn down an easy way to make money.
