More Buffet

As reported by Matt Stoller at ISTE, Warren Buffet recently came out strongly against the Bush tax cuts, going so far as to say “I don’t think enough of it [federal revenue] comes from people like me and too much comes from people who work in our shoe factories.”

Is Buffet just some rich old guy with outdated opinions? Consider his track record. In the late 1990s tech boom, Buffet took a lot of heat from Berkshire shareholders over his refusal to involve Berkshire Hathaway in the tech boom. From 2000 onward, he had many grateful shareholders. Buffet also has long argued for the expensing of stock options, arguing that burying those expenses allows companies to inflate earnings and that the options are granted disproportionately to top management. While not the same as the fraud at Enron, not expensing options is similar in spirit and in effect to more nefarious methods of inflating earnings. Also, Buffet’s salary is only $100,000k per year, though he stands to make substantially (i.e., hundres of millions) more if the company he operates, Berkshire Hathaway, does well–and to lose equally large amounts if his company does poorly. The point: the man knows business, and unlike another recent newsmaker, he practices what he preaches.

AB

UPDATE: In 2002 Buffet’s pay was $296K . Extremely modest by CEO standards.

UPDATE 2: Matt Stoller has much more on Buffet at ISTE.