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Warren E. Buffett


Self Description

February 2006: "Warren E. Buffett has been a director of The Coca-Cola Company since 1989. Mr. Buffett is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., a diversified holding company, and has held these positions for more than the past five years. He is also a director of The Washington Post Company."

http://www2.coca-cola.com/ourcompany/bios/bio_23.html

Third-Party Descriptions

December 2012: "Moreover, without addressing larger tax preferences, like a lower rate on capital gains, it does almost nothing to cure the so-called Buffett problem, in which Warren Buffett’s secretary pays a higher effective rate than her billionaire boss. It doesn’t even raise much revenue."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/business/plan-to-cap-deductions-is-setback-for-charities.html

April 2012: "That’s not just good luck. It’s often the result of hard work, as suggested by some of the strategies below. Much of the income among the top 400 derives from dividends and capital gains, generated by everything from appreciated real estate—yes, there is some left—to stocks and the sale of family businesses. As Warren Buffett likes to point out, since most of his income is from dividends, his tax rate is less than that of the people who clean his office."

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-17/how-to-pay-no-taxes-10-strategies-used-by-the-rich

January 2012: 'Mr. Obama again proposed changes to the tax code so the wealthy pay more, a position he has indicated he will continue to press in this election year against Republican opposition. He called for Congress to put into place his “Buffett Rule” — named after the Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren E. Buffett — whereby people making more than $1 million a year would pay a minimum effective tax rate of at least 30 percent in income taxes.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/us/politics/state-of-the-union-2012.html

July 2011: "Warren E. Buffett, for instance, saw his stock holdings rise last year by 16 percent, to $46 billion. Other longtime chief executives or founders who are sitting on billions of paper profits include Jeffrey P. Bezos of Amazon.com and Michael S. Dell, the founder of Dell."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/business/03pay.html

August 2009: 'Here is how Warren Buffett analyzed the situation in his 2003 letter to shareholders: “Year after year, at literally thousands of funds, directors had routinely rehired the incumbent management company, however pathetic its performance had been. Just as routinely, the directors had mindlessly approved fees that in many cases far exceeded those that could have been negotiated.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/us/18bar.html

November 2008: '...Warren Buffett, the world's most successful investor and a legendary oddsmaker in pricing insurance policies for unlikely but catastrophic events, concludes that nuclear terrorism is "inevitable." He has said, "I don't see any way that it won't happen."'

http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/21535/?a=f

May 2008: "At the same time, Warren E. Buffett, the investor who is the biggest shareholder in Moody’s with a nearly 20 percent stake, said the questions about the firm’s ratings would not permanently damage it."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/business/22moody.html

May 2008: 'governments have been struggling to keep up with the promises they made. Many are taking out loans to restock their pension funds...using sunny projections of what their investments will return....Such "accounting nonsense" has been "pushing the envelope -- or worse -- in its attempt to report the highest number possible" for their investment returns, wrote billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett...'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/10/AR2008051002883.html

September 2007: “I think the government ought to make sure that all the people here who drew short straws have a decent minimum,” Mr. Buffett said. “We moved toward that with Social Security, but we could go a lot further now.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/business/06giving.html

July 2007: There is a catch to all this public-spirited, high-policy grandeur, however. The very rich in America pay taxes at a lower rate than most working people, and, due to a wrinkle in the tax code, private-equity partners enjoy some of the lowest tax rates of all. At a Hillary Clinton fund-raiser in New York last month, Warren Buffett, no stranger to wealth, told an audience filled with bankers and real-estate developers the system was, in effect, rigged. 'This is what Congress in its wisdom did: the 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter.' Buffett (who is a director of NEWSWEEK's parent, The Washington Post Company) offered a million dollars to any fellow magnate who could prove he had higher tax rates than his secretary.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19762041/site/newsweek

October 2006: Warren Buffett has ordered top managers at his Berkshire Hathaway group to redouble efforts to crack down on unethical behaviour, warning that practices such as stock options backdating cannot be justified because 'everybody else is doing it'.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15199920/

February 2006: "Born in Omaha to Howard Buffett and Leila Stahl Buffett, Mr. Buffett attended school in Omaha and Washington D.C., where his father served as a U.S. Congressman. He attended the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, and received a B.S. degree in Business Administration from UNL in 1950. He received a Masters degree in Economics from Columbia University in 1951."

http://www.cba.unl.edu/hof/index.asp?id=73

February 2006: "Warren Edward Buffett (born August 30, 1930) is a wealthy American investor and businessman. Nicknamed the "Oracle of Omaha", Buffett has amassed an enormous fortune from astute investments, particularly through his company Berkshire Hathaway, in which he holds a greater than 38% stake. With an estimated current net worth of $40 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the second-richest person in the world, behind Microsoft chairman Bill Gates."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett

May 2005: "Over the past thirty-five years, Warren Buffett has emerged as arguably the greatest investor in American history. If you had invested $10,000 in Berkshire Hathaway when he took control in 1965, your holdings would be worth more than $50 million today. The second-richest man in the world, Buffett still lives in the same house he bought three decades ago for $31,500, drives an older Lincoln Towncar, and downs countless cans of Coca-Cola every day."

http://beginnersinvest.about.com/cs/warrenbuffett/l/blwarrenbuffett.htm

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Berkshire Hathaway Organization Feb 15, 2006
Director/Trustee/Overseer (past or present) Coca-Cola Company, The ("Coke") Organization Feb 15, 2006
Student/Trainee (past or present) Columbia University Organization Feb 15, 2006
Advised by (past or present) Nuclear Threat Initiative, The (NTI) Organization May 18, 2005
Student/Trainee (past or present) University of Nebraska at Lincoln (UNL) Organization Feb 15, 2006
Director/Trustee/Overseer (past or present) Washington Post Company Organization Feb 15, 2006
Student/Trainee (past or present) Wharton School Organization Feb 15, 2006
Family Member Doris Buffett Person Sep 7, 2007
Friend (past or present) Mr. William "Bill" Gates III Person Feb 15, 2006

Articles and Resources

26 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 6]

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Dec 14, 2012 Tax Plan Is Popular, but Not Quite Fair

QUOTE: The political appeal of a proposal that limits deductions without actually naming any — inciting the powerful interests and lobbyists that support them — seems obvious. But many tax experts said that a fixed dollar cap is anything but the evenhanded approach to closing loopholes it appears to be.

 New York Times
Apr 17, 2012 How to Pay No Taxes: 10 Strategies Used by the Rich

QUOTE: For those who can afford a shrewd accountant or attorney, our era is rife with opportunities to avoid—or at least defer—tax bills, according to tax specialists and public records. It’s limited only by the boundaries of taste, creativity, and the ability to understand some very complex shelters.

 BusinessWeek
Jan 24, 2012 In Address, Obama Makes Pitch for Economic Fairness

QUOTE: President Obama pledged on Tuesday night to use government power to balance the scale between America’s rich and the rest of the public, trying to present an election-year choice between continued leadership toward an economy “built to last” and what he called irresponsible policies of the past that caused an economic collapse.

 New York Times
Jul 06, 2011 We Knew They Got Raises. But This?

QUOTE: examination of executive pay in 2010...the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009.

 New York Times
Apr 20, 2011 Stumbling Into Bad Behavior

QUOTE: They overlook transgressions — bending a rule to help a colleague, overlooking information that might damage the reputation of a client — because it is in their interest to do so… Good people unknowingly contribute to unethical actions, so reforms need to address the often hidden influences on our behavior.

 New York Times
Aug 17, 2009 Supreme Court to Hear Case on Executive Pay (Sidebar)

QUOTE: The Supreme Court will hear the case this fall, as anger over huge bonuses paid to the executives of failing companies continues to grow. The case, Jones v. Harris Associates, may turn out to be the court’s first significant statement on the corporate culture that helped lead to the Great Recession.

 New York Times
Nov 01, 2008 Nuclear Deterrence in the Age of Nuclear Terrorism An attack on one of the great cities of the world is almost inevitable. But with better detection technologies, a new international alliance could st

QUOTE: Given current policies and practices, a nuclear terrorist attack that devastates one of the great cities of the world is inevitable. In my judgment, if governments do no more and no less than they are doing today, the odds of such an event within a decade are more than 50 percent.

 Technology Review
May 22, 2008 More Questions Are Raised About Moody’s Ratings

QUOTE: The attorney general of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, who has criticized the practices of Moody’s and other ratings firms, said that he was investigating how Moody’s had dealt with the possible errors in its computer models. “One of the areas that most concerns us is the potential favoritism and abusive and illegal practices that involve dealings with the companies that they rate,” Mr. Blumenthal said in an interview.

 New York Times
May 11, 2008 Growing Deficits Threaten Pensions: Accounting Tactics Conceal a Crisis For Public Workers

QUOTE: The funds that pay pension and health benefits to police officers, teachers and millions of other public employees across the country are facing a shortfall that could soon run into trillions of dollars. But the accounting techniques used by state and local governments to balance their pension books disguise the extent of the crisis facing these retirees and the taxpayers who may ultimately be called on to pay the freight...

 Washington Post
Feb 20, 2008 John F. Kennedy, plagiarist?

QUOTE: If Barack Obama borrowed from Deval Patrick, so what? Creative "borrowing" is part of speechwriting, as Kennedy knew, and as I learned while working for Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.

 Salon
Sep 06, 2007 Age of Riches: Big Gifts, Tax Breaks and a Debate on Charity

QUOTE: Research shows that less than 10 percent of the money Americans give to charity addresses basic human needs, like sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry and caring for the indigent sick, and that the wealthiest typically devote an even smaller portion of their giving to such causes than everyone else.

 New York Times
Aug 03, 2007 Wall Street's Lucrative Tax Break Is Under Fire

QUOTE: The most controversial tax break on Wall Street, known simply as the Carry, is not authorized by any law and was never approved by Congress.

 Washington Post
Jul 23, 2007 Taxing the Super Rich: Private-equity billionaires—the new Masters of the Universe—often pay far lower rates than the rest of us. But Washington is trying to change that. Get ready for a fight.

QUOTE: The very rich in America pay taxes at a lower rate than most working people, and, due to a wrinkle in the tax code, private-equity partners enjoy some of the lowest tax rates of all.

 MSNBC
Jul 15, 2007 Fair Taxes? Depends What You Mean by ‘Fair’

QUOTE: DO the rich pay their fair share in taxes? This is likely to become a defining question during the presidential campaign. At a recent fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton, the billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett said that rich guys like him weren’t paying enough.

 New York Times
Dec 16, 2006 What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You?

QUOTE: In the same world in which more than a billion people live at a level of affluence never previously known, roughly a billion other people struggle to survive on the purchasing power equivalent of less than one U.S. dollar per day. .... Philanthropy on this scale raises many ethical questions: Why are the people who are giving doing so? Does it do any good? Should we praise them for giving so much or criticize them for not giving still more?

 New York Times
Oct 10, 2006 Buffett orders crackdown on unethical practices

QUOTE: poor corporate governance cannot be forgiven just because the practice is widespread. "The five most dangerous words in business may be 'everybody else is doing it'," wrote Mr Buffett, who has long been sceptical of stock options as a means of remunerating executives.

 MSNBC
Sep 13, 2006 Do Hedge Funds Hold 'Trade Secrets'? Bulldog Investors' Phillip Goldstein says yes, and he's preparing to launch a battle with the SEC over its 13F disclosure rule

QUOTE: Goldstein contends that his stock holdings are "trade secrets," much like the protected formula used to make Coke (KO ). His application states that complying with the 13F rule "constitute[s] a 'taking' of [the fund's] property without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution."

 BusinessWeek
Dec 01, 2005 Profit Predictions Called 'Fool's Game': Chamber Chief Says It's Time to Stop

QUOTE: ...Thomas J. Donohue on Wednesday called on all publicly traded companies to stop offering quarterly earnings guidance, saying such predictions create a damaging focus on "meaningless short-term performance" and undermine a company's ability to manage for the long term.

 Washington Post
Jun 18, 2005 U.S. Attorney Subpoenas 2 Insurers in Widening Inquiry

QUOTE: "Two large insurance companies, the St. Paul Companies and Ace, said yesterday that they had received subpoenas from the United States attorney in Manhattan as part of a widening investigation into insurance that companies can use to inflate financial results artificially."

 New York Times
Jun 16, 2005 In a Lather Over the Gillette Deal

QUOTE: Critics of its merger with P&G say conflicted investment banks pushed the move and execs put their own hefty gain above investors'

 BusinessWeek

26 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 6]