Difference between revisions of "Warren Buffett"

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And we figured out how to use our industrial capacity to in effect defeat the [[Axis powers]]. And how do you recreate that with, you know, the present [[democratic system]]? I’m not sure I know the answer. But I sure know the problem. And I think that if you’ve got an emergency on your hands, I mean, you really need to re-engineer the energy system of the United States.
 
And we figured out how to use our industrial capacity to in effect defeat the [[Axis powers]]. And how do you recreate that with, you know, the present [[democratic system]]? I’m not sure I know the answer. But I sure know the problem. And I think that if you’ve got an emergency on your hands, I mean, you really need to re-engineer the energy system of the United States.
 
<br>
 
<br>
I don’t think you can do it without something resembling the machinery, the urgency, whatever. The [[capital]]’s there. The people are there. [[|net zero|The objective]] is obvious. And we just don’t seem to be able to do it in a [[peace time]] where we’re used to following a given set of procedures.
+
I don’t think you can do it without something resembling the machinery, the urgency, whatever. The [[capital]]’s there. The people are there. [[net zero|The objective]] is obvious. And we just don’t seem to be able to do it in a [[peace time]] where we’re used to following a given set of procedures.
  
 
And, you know, [[China]]’s one country. And we’ve got 50 states. And we got a whole different system of government.<ref>https://buffett.cnbc.com/video/2023/05/08/morning-session---2023-meeting.html</ref>}}
 
And, you know, [[China]]’s one country. And we’ve got 50 states. And we got a whole different system of government.<ref>https://buffett.cnbc.com/video/2023/05/08/morning-session---2023-meeting.html</ref>}}

Revision as of 23:13, 13 May 2023

Person.png Warren Buffett   Influencewatch Sourcewatch Twitter WikiquoteRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
(businessman, billionaire)
Warren Buffett KU Visit.jpg
BornWarren Edward Buffett
1930-08-30
Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.
NationalityUS
Alma materWharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Columbia University
Parents • Howard Buffett
• Leila Stahl Buffett
Children • Susan
• Howard
• Peter
SpouseSusan Thompson
Founder ofThe Giving Pledge
Member ofDemocracy Alliance, The Good Club
Interest ofPeter Flaherty
PartyDemocratic
One of the world's richest men and a passionate proponent of population reduction.

Warren Edward Buffett is an American investor, business tycoon and "philanthropist". He has a fortune of over US$78.9 billion made by investing in private monopolies and notably harmful and unscrupulous companies. This made him the world's seventh-wealthiest person (as of August 2020)[1].

While buying himself a folksy image in the media as a genial kindly old man with simple lifestyle, his real passion is population reduction. Describing himself as having "a Malthusian dread" of population growth among the poor[2], he was one of the participants in the Good Club, a 2009 billionaire meeting discussing how to shrink the world's population.

He also were well acquainted with some of the main actors in the Franklin child prostitution ring.

Official narrative

Known as the "Oracle of Omaha", Buffets has an alleged uncanny investment acumen.[3] The The annual meetings at Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett’s conglomerate, have been dubbed "Woodstock for capitalists," where many in the business community hangs on his every word. The corporate press in general have treats him like a celebrity, publishing "quirky features about his bad eating habits, frugal spending, and hobnobbing with other celebrities."[4]

Business activities

Buffett has been the chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway since 1970. The official narrative around the sprawling company highlights its share in many notably multinational corporations with harmful and unscrupulous business practices, including junk food company Coca-Cola, predatory banks like Wells Fargo, Bank of America[4], fraudulent Goldman Sachs[5], GE, the railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation; and chemical companies, mines, retail, corporate media, etc. These company have taken large subsidies from the public, for example during the 2008 financial crisis.[6]

Another - and less media prominent - income stream comes from smaller companies in a monopoly situation. Verisign is a government-granted monopoly which operates an essential backbone of the Internet: registries for the domain names .com and .net, among others.[4]

Teva Pharmaceuticals, a manufacturer of generic opioid based products is one of the companies in which Buffett has had a huge investment. He is a huge investor in DaVita, which is one of two dialysis companies, giving really terrible service and capitalize on the fact that Medicare covers kidney disease in the United States.[7] Clayton Homes, the largest mobile-home builder in the United States, using high-pressure sales tactics and issuing predatory loans swollen with hidden fees.[4][7]

Buffett was for many years one of the major investors in John Deere. John Deere not only holds a monopoly over tractors and farm equipment, but exploits its power by forcing farmers to return to its manufacturers in order to repair its products, essentially blocking people from repairing their own equipment.[7]

Buffett has for decades had a large share in much of corporate media. He was formerly the second biggest stockholder in the Washington Post, a director and a confidant of its most notable chief, Katharine Graham.[8] He relinquished his share in 2014, in connection wit the Graham family's sale of the newspaper to Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos.[8] Buffett also has a stake in Amazon[7]. He had a controlling power in ABC-TV.[9]

Buffett has investmented in Moody's, one of the big three credit rating agencies, which rates bonds for investors. At the same time he has over $100 billion in shares in financial services arena. After the 2008 financial crisis, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) came to interview Warren Buffett, not just about the credit rating business, but all the financial services area. [7]


Taxes

“There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.”
Warren Buffett (2006)  [10]

In a 2011 New York Times op-ed, Warren Buffett asked Congress to "raise [tax] rates immediately" on very wealthy individuals like him.[11] Buffett’s op-ed prompted President Obama to roll out a so-called "Buffet Rule" that would apply a minimum tax rate of 30% to all those making over $1 million a year.[12]

Conservative economist Arthur Laffer cast Buffett’s proposal to raise taxes on the rich as hypocritical because "Buffett shields almost the entirety of his true income from federal income taxation, and he makes clear his belief that he can do more good with his wealth than Uncle Sam.” Moreover, Laffer argued that because Buffett shields the majority of his money, the “effective tax rate on his true income would hardly budge if this ‘Buffett Rule’ were applied."[13] In any case, taxes are avoided by putting the funds into tax doges like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2008, Berkshire invested in preferred stock of Goldman Sachs as part of a recapitalization of the investment bank. Buffett defended Lloyd Blankfein's decisions as CEO of Goldman Sachs,[14] as the bank was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for Securities Fraud.

Population reduction

In 2009 14 of the world's richest people were invited by Bill Gates "to save the world". The billionaires, reported The Times, "discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles" to the change they want implemented, which they summarized as a "bid to curb overpopulation"

Buffett is a passionate supporter of population reduction. Buffett has put time and energy as well as a large amount money into this issue.

He and his investment partner and fellow donor Charlie Munger were quite involved in People v. Belous, a 1969 case paving the way for abortion in California on privacy grounds, which was cited during the Roe v. Wade debate. . After abortion was allowed in California but still illegal in most states, they set up a "church" which they dubbed the "Ecumenical Fellowship," and used it as a kind of underground railroad to transport women to Los Angeles and other cities for quick abortions. [2]

He founded the Warren Buffett Foundation in 1964[2]. It has mainly focused on abortion, contraceptives family planning, and on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.[15] It was renamed the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, after his wife who died in 2004. The Buffett Foundation is known for its "secrecy...often appearing under grant acknowledgements only as 'an anonymous donor.'"[16]

In 2006, he announced that he would give 85% of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as he believed that the Gates Foundation would be able to use his money effectively.[17] The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation is still the third-largest family foundation in the country, behind only the Bill & Melinda Gates and Ford foundations.[18]

The foundation lists hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to groups advocating radical population reduction. Negative Population Growth, the Association for Voluntary Sterilization, Planned Parenthood[19], the Population Council[20] and Population Institute, the Sex Information and Education Council, and Federal American Immigration Reform.[21]; and abortion promoters such as Marie Stopes International, NARAL, National Abortion Federation, Catholics for a Free Choice, Abortion Access Project, Center for Reproductive Rights, and dozens of other such advocates. After examining his foundation’s IRS filings, the Media Research Center reported that Buffett’s grants to abortion groups just from 1989 to 2012 (with the tax returns from 1997 to 2000 missing) totaled at least $1.3 billion.[22] In the 1990s, the Buffett Foundation helped finance the development of the chemical abortion drug RU-486.

In 2009, he founded The Giving Pledge together with Bill Gates, whereby several dozen billionaires get together for conferences, to jointly spend their money on "philanthropy" under the de facto leadership and guidance of Bill Gates. The Pledgers promises to "give away" 50% of their fortune (although this is misleading, as "philanthropy" functions both a tax dodge and a loss leader, plus as a powerful political tool buying influence). Starting in 2006, Buffett pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune "in his lifetime or at death",[23], essentially handing his money over to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation when he dies.

The Buffett Foundation is donor to the very dodgy pay-for-play Clinton Foundation donor. He also gives through the Democracy Alliance,[24] a network of billionaire donors who coordinate their political donations to groups that the Alliance has endorsed, anonymously and often through foundations working as middlemen to hide the where the money is coming from.

Personal life

He married cabaret singer Susan Thompson in 1952 and lived in their hometown of Omaha for more than two decades. In the late ’70s, the duo entered into an unusual arrangement — they remained married, but Susan moved to San Francisco. She also introduced Warren to the woman who would become his longtime companion, Astrid Menks, a waitress at a nightclub[25], whom he married decades later after Susan’s death.[26]

Franklin child prostitution ring

Omaha, Nebraska was the center of the Franklin child prostitution ring. It was used by the US deep state for purposes including rewards, profit and especially sexual blackmail from 1988-1991. It was partially exposed, and involved among many other elements the Catholic orphanage Boys Town, the bank Franklin credit union and politician Larry King.

Larry King is/was a multi-millionaire businessman and conman who was closely involved in the Franklin child prostitution ring. One of his earliest boosters was Susan, the first wife of Warren Buffett. Susan Buffett was a volunteer at the Franklin credit union, managed by King, in its early days. According to the Lincoln Journal-Star of March 19, 1989, King "liked to tell the story of a woman coming to the credit union to see him and being old to return at 7:00 the next morning because he was so busy. The woman was Susie Buffett, wife of billionaire Warren Buffett, and she did come back to offer her help at the credit union."[25]

For years, it has been part of Larry King lore in Omaha, that the Buffetts hosted a tenth wedding anniversary party for Larry King and his wife Alice.King returned favors, by hosting a fundraiser for Buffet's son Howard, when Howard ran for Douglas County com-missioner.[25]

Warren Buffett may have done some more private socializing with Larry King, if a former Omaha city employee is correct in his report, that when Larry King was crowned "Queen" at The Max gay bar, Warren Buffett was his escort. "This is what his cousin Barbara Webb told me," said the source. "She said the people, they were mad, because Larry brought his son and his wife there."[25]

In 1972, Warren Buffett executed a maneuver around Boys Town, which is not fully understood to this day. His own Sun newspaper ran a series of articles, that targeted Boys Town for having too large an endowment. The Sun wrote, "members of the board of directors of Father Flanagan's Boys' Home generally seem little concerned that the institution has amassed a net worth of more than $200 million while going to the public twice a year with a plea of poverty." Of the cited $200 million, $175 million was the "liquid endowment."[25]

As of the early 1990s, Buffett was believed to have played some significant role with the orphanage, perhaps in his specialty - investment advice. An inquiry with Boys Town was referred to the in-house attorney for the orphanage, who, in answer to the simple question, "What is Mr. Buffett's precise role with Boys Town?" spent 25 minutes in two phone calls, not quite denying, but also carefully never confirming, that Buffett had a role with the facility. At any rate, Buffett has not complained lately about the size of Boys Town's endowment, although it is much larger now than it was in 1973.[25]

Vaccines as business model

“In the pharmaceutical world of economic durable competitive advantages, having a patent on a best-selling drug is about as good as it gets. The next best thing is having a monopoly on selling a country’s national health program the vaccines it needs for its childhood inoculation programs. Both of these businesses are hugely profitable and GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) excels in both these categories.

The vaccine business is particularly attractive because an individual shot (or jab) costs GSK approximately $1.50 to manufacture and it sells to national vaccine programs for approximately $9 a shot. That gives GSK a net profit of approximately $7.50 a shot. This markup gives GSK a very healthy profit margin that improves with each and every new disease that the company develops a vaccine for. Consider this: GSK's profits rose 10% with the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak—a disease for which the company had a state-of-the-art vaccine ready to inoculate the masses.

In addition to its patents and the durable competitive advantage GSK has with the vaccines, it also established the relationships with the world's governments, and it has the financial capital to create, manufacture, and sell vaccines on a world scale. If you were in charge of the health of a nation's 30 million-plus children, who would you buy your vaccines from? Every year? Year after year? You’d pick the biggest and the best. There are only four pharmaceutical giants that control most of the vaccine production in the world and GSK is one of them.

There is another component to the vaccine equation that also spells BIG MONEY: Every year, women all over the world give birth to approximately 133 million new babies, 4.3 million babies in the U.S. alone. With the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommending that children aged birth through six receive 34 individual vaccine shots/jabs, that means the market for those 34 vaccine shots/jabs increases every year by 4.3 million in just the U.S. alone. This in turn means that the vaccine manufacturers selling in the U.S. have the potential to earn a profit of $1.09 billion every year (4.3 million x 34 x $7.50 = $1.09 billion). Consider the number of yearly vaccines worldwide and the numbers are staggering—approximately $34 billion a year (133 million x 34 x $7.50 = $33.9 billion). After ten years, in the U.S. alone, vaccine manufacturers will see more than $10 billion in net profit. On a world scale, the number jumps to a potential $340 billion in profits.

And wait, it gets even better. With the invention of each new vaccine comes a patent that is good for twenty years and guarantees that no one else can make the vaccine. In other words, the company has a monopoly.

Even when the patents expire, other companies rarely step into the market because the major manufacturers have a permanent relationship with the government health departments of the world. This enables manufacturers to continue making the same vaccines year after year while maintaining their large profit margins even after their patents have expired.

And last but not least, vaccine manufacturers in the US are completely immune from lawsuits. Back in the 1980s several bad batches of vaccines injured so many children that the resulting successful lawsuits threatened to bankrupt the manufacturers, so the manufacturers lobbied a bill through Congress making them a protected class.”
Mary Buffett,  Warren Buffett (2011)  [27]

Climate change agenda

Through the Gates Foundation, Buffett is a major sponsor of NGOs pushing the climate change agenda.

At the Berkshire Hatahway annual meeting in 2023, Buffett mused on how the "present democratic system" had to go, under the pretext of solving a "climate emergency":


And I don’t really know whether our form of government is ideal at all in terms of solving the problem you describe.

And we found ourselves in a world war. And what we did in a world war is we brought a bunch of people to Washington at a $1 a year. I don’t know whether it was Sidney Weinberg or Goldman Sachs. You just name them. And we gave them enormous power to reorient the resources of the United States to face the problem that they faced, which was to create a war machine...And they reordered the industrial enterprise of the United States in a way that was unbelievable.
And we figured out how to use our industrial capacity to in effect defeat the Axis powers. And how do you recreate that with, you know, the present democratic system? I’m not sure I know the answer. But I sure know the problem. And I think that if you’ve got an emergency on your hands, I mean, you really need to re-engineer the energy system of the United States.
I don’t think you can do it without something resembling the machinery, the urgency, whatever. The capital’s there. The people are there. The objective is obvious. And we just don’t seem to be able to do it in a peace time where we’re used to following a given set of procedures.

And, you know, China’s one country. And we’ve got 50 states. And we got a whole different system of government.[28]


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References

  1. https://web.archive.org/web/20200815130703/https://www.forbes.com/profile/warren-buffett/#4eb9041e4639
  2. a b c https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/buffett-billions-for-abortion/
  3. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/oracleofomaha.asp
  4. a b c d https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/special-investigation-the-dirty-secret-behind-warren-buffetts-billions/
  5. https://fortune.com/2016/04/11/goldman-sachs-doj-settlement/
  6. https://nypost.com/2017/09/07/ex-employees-allege-wells-fargo-defrauded-the-government/
  7. a b c d e https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/warren-buffett-americas-folksiest
  8. a b https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/mar/13/washington-post-warrenbuffett
  9. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/20/business/buffett-s-low-key-role-in-high-stakes-deal.html
  10. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html
  11. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html
  12. http://www.politico.com/story/2011/09/obama-to-urge-higher-taxes-on-rich-063756
  13. http://cp-advisors.com/documents/WarrenBuffettsCallforHigherTaxesontheRich.pdf quoted in Infuencewatch https://www.influencewatch.org/person/warren-buffett/
  14. https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/buffett-says-he-backs-goldmans-blankfein-100/
  15. https://money.cnn.com/2006/06/25/magazines/fortune/charity1.fortune/index.htm
  16. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/abortion-research-buffett/
  17. https://money.cnn.com/2006/06/25/magazines/fortune/charity2.fortune/index.htm
  18. https://web.archive.org/web/20150731170213/http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/topfunders/top100giving.html
  19. https://capitalresearch.org/article/warren-buffetts-foundation-has-poured-4-billion-into-pro-abortion-advocacy/
  20. https://www.grantmakers.io/search/grants/?query=Population%20Council
  21. https://archive.org/stream/TheFranklinCover-upByFormerGreenBeretJohnDecamp/the_Frankklin_cover-up_-_ebook_djvu.txt
  22. http://mrc.org/articles/warren-buffett-billion-dollar-king-abortion
  23. https://web.archive.org/web/20200920004620/https://money.cnn.com/2010/06/15/news/newsmakers/Warren_Buffett_Pledge_Letter.fortune/index.htm
  24. http://freebeacon.com/politics/warren-buffett-funded-group-signs-on-as-democracy-alliance-partner/
  25. a b c d e f Document:The Franklin Cover-up
  26. https://web.archive.org/web/20150731170213/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-30/warren-buffett-s-family-secretly-funded-a-birth-control-revolution
  27. https://climate-science.press/2021/11/29/warren-buffet-explains-vaccines/ The Warren Buffett Stock Portfolio: Warren Buffett Stock Picks: Why and When He Is Investing in Them by Mary Buffett
  28. https://buffett.cnbc.com/video/2023/05/08/morning-session---2023-meeting.html