Comment by harry8
4 hours ago
He definitely wants us to think that about his integrity, his fans even more so and in fairness, he's pretty good. Not quite the sunday-school capitalism perfection that some would have us believe. Which can grate a bit if you've looked in detail at his career.
Maybe, but I’m not perfect either. The scale is just different. It’s clear that the standard for rich people isn’t all that high, so in the company of the remaining 1B+ crowd he looks pretty decent.
Yeah he’s not quite Jack Welch level of dissonance between reality and his fanboys, but he’s hardly some superhero for profiting from the great financialization of the US economy. He made sure his book got bailed out during the GFC. He cheered on Wells Fargo while they opened up a bunch of fraudulent accounts. And so on.
And when he found out about Wells Fargo's behavior, he liquidated the position and has remained out of it. I fail to see the problem with what he did in that case. As a ~5% holder he (Berkshire) had no special control over the company in terms of micro-audits to surface such fraudulent behavior promptly as it was happening.
That’s simply not true. The WSJ started reporting on it in 2011 [0]. Berkshire didn’t fully exit their position until 11 years later in 2022 [1].
[0]https://archive.ph/Gc88k
[1]https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/17/investing/berkshire-hathaway-...
> As a ~5% holder he (Berkshire) had no special control over the company in terms of micro-audits to surface such fraudulent behavior promptly as it was happening.
Apropos of this particular scenario, acting like an individual shareholder with your 5% of a company's stock is helpless to exert influence on the board is not at all accurate. Realistically, at that scale, anyone who holds even 1% is someone you better listen to (not necessarily follow, to be clear) when they pick up the phone.
And that's when its someone who is also not someone who opens their mouth and has millions of followers who also hold stock, like Buffett.
I’ve never quite understood the meme about Warren Buffett being a More Ethical Billionaire™. The defenses are always like “It’s not fair to judge him solely for BNSF giving rail workers one paid sick day per year because he also owns GEICO, which settled a suit last year about (among other things) illegally surveilling and telling employees to call the police on people that approached them about unionizing”