I understand. It was a good point.

Common sense says that someone with no income or assets will quickly default on a mortgage, and lending to borrowers like this on a mass scale could lead to huge losses for a lender, yet this common sense was ignored. Therefore, this shows that it takes someone with the skill of Buffett to manage risk in financial and insurance services to produce large profits while guarding against downside risk."

...or maybe just someone with some common sense. :-)

How do you get that Buffett successfully managed the risk in financials? It took a government bailout to save something like 13 of the companies in which he held a major position. He didn't manage that well. You could argue that he got very lucky....and bailed out. If he knew how bad the derivatives were then why didn't he sell his positions? He said himself something to the effect that he thought housing would always go up and was surprised by the extent of the collapse and I believe Schroeder called him on that.

Look, I love Buffett but he was one of the many fat cats that got saved by government intervention. There's no denying that. Give him credit where it due but also give him criticism as well. There's something very distasteful about billionaires having their backsides saved by the average Joe and their kids and their grandkids, etc. etc. etc....... At some point, we need to reinstitute Capitalism and its creative destruction.

Buffett is not, and should not, be above the destructive process if he makes bad investments. This time he was. Me thinks that sucks.[/b]

You make a very good point and I agree that Buffett made some very big mistakes over the past few years. Yet Id still rather have Buffett managing Berkshire than the Nobel Laureates at LTCM.

"It looked to us like an oil play. He has a history of making bad oil play decisions. And that was at $75/share, we thought there were better oil plays. At $100/share we think he has lost his mind."

---Bruce Greenwald commenting on Buffet's purchase of BNI

Just another view from a Columbia professor. Right? Who knows but it makes you wonder.

Time will tell... or maybe he just wanted another train set for his basement. :-)

lol, I dont think BNI can fit in his basement

I think it's farily obvious that WEB wants to own all of USG. That is next on his list as far as I am cocnerned. The thing is, this is not going to happen any time soon.

>> I think it's farily obvious that WEB wants to own all of USG.

LOL that makes two of us then. Yes, you can read that both ways.

Problem with writing equals problem with credibility. Place a semi-colon before however and a comma after it when it follows as complete thought (sentence). ...(AXP...when it reached its low in March; however, ......................

James Nyka: "Problem with writing equals problem with credibility"

What does writing have to do with credibility? Perhaps you meant to say "professional" rather than "credibility." I agree that writers should attempt to write well but I personally don't think it has anything to do with credibility (I'm taking credibility to mean investment success, quality of investment ideas, etc.)