Monday, May 24, 2010

"Why Did Obama Get Distant With Warren Buffett?" (BRK.B)

Great. The President has Larry Summers, Robert Rubin and Jeff Immelt advising him while Warren gets frozen out.
God help us all.
From DealBreaker:
Things were going great and WB was thisclose to fulfilling his lifelong dream of performing an Angry Pirate in the Lincoln bedroom and then boom! Out of nowhere, The Oracle stops hearing from the guy. Jonathan Alter reports:

Warren Buffett, who had been in contact with Obama every week as the economy collapsed in the fall of 2008, found himself mysteriously out of touch with the new president. In late 2009, the billionaire told a friend that he’d not had a single one-on-one meeting with Obama since he became president. They did speak once on the phone. No one knew the reason Obama held him at arm’s length, though it likely had to do with Buffett’s $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs and his large ownership stake in Moody’s, one of the ratings agencies Obama blamed most for the economic crisis.

As Obama wasn’t man enough to give it to Buffett straight from the get-go, we’re probably never going to get an answer out of him. Still, in an effort to provide some sort of closure to Buffs, so he can finally move on, and maybe one day trust another president again, let’s give it our best guess. Did Obama drop off the face of the earth because of:

a) the Goldman taint...Three more.

My first thought was "It's Charlie!" but the timeline is wrong. Mr. Munger didn't say that Cap-and-Trade was "Monstrously Stupid Right Now...Almost Demented" until May '09.

From our compilation post "Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger on Cap-and-Trade and When He Started Liking Trains (BRK.A; BNI)"