Warren Buffett will make $70 million from bank dividends this year, according to Bloomberg - General

thenews 2015.03.12 15:39 #11

Warren Buffett will make another $70 million from bank dividends this year

Lots of people have cause to celebrate after many US banks passed the Federal Reserve's stress test on Wednesday and promptly announced plans to raise dividends. Chief among them is Warren Buffett.

The Berkshire Hathaway CEO, worth about $72.3 billion, can expect dividend payouts on his bank investments to increase by $70 million this year, Bloomberg's Noah Buhayar reported.

The banks that passed the stress test — which is designed to measure banks' capital holdings and gauge how prepared they would be in the event of a market upset — were allowed to increase their dividend payouts. That includes Wells Fargo, in which Berkshire Hathaway is the largest shareholder.

Wells Fargo is raising their dividend by 2.5 cents a share, putting Berkshire's payout at about $48 million this year, while American Express, another of Buffett's major investments, is raising dividends by 3 cents a share, adding another $18 million to the pile, Bloomberg reported.

His other bank holdings include U.S. Bancorp and Goldman Sachs, which together will contribute another $6.5 million in dividends.

Not a bad clean up for the Oracle of Omaha, but it's still nothing compared to last year's haul — more than $120 million in total.

source

Warren Buffett has asked Berkshire Profit on Goldman Buffett's Crisis-Lending Haul Reaches

whisperer 2015.03.13 12:45 #12

Poor man. But he will find a way not to pay the taxes (again)

thenews 2015.03.29 19:12 #13

Deutsche Bank asks how Warren Buffett is any different from Gordon Gekko

Deutsche Bank just sort of kind of compared Warren Buffett to Gordon Gekko.

Gekko, played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 film "Wall Street," infamously told shareholders of the fictional Teldar Paper company that "Greed is good."

And in a note to clients on Friday, Deutsche Bank compares Buffett's deal to acquire Kraft to something that you might imagine Gekko would do.

Or at least, the firm doesn't think people would be quite so nice about the deal.

Here's Deutsche Bank:

Thought experiment: how would this "merger" have been reported if you swapped the popular, cuddly Warren Buffet with Gordon Gekko? No-doubt critics would have recalled his audacious acquisition of Heinz two years ago. Next the sad tales of fired workers and shuttered factories in order to recoup the 40 per cent he paid above the decade average sector ev/ebitda multiple. Having squeezed Heinz's ebitda margin to 28 per cent (the global sector average margin is just 11 per cent) the story turns to Gordon's attack on Kraft. Goosed earnings on a 14 times multiple unfairly justifies taking control of the merged company (Kraft makes almost twice the revenues and more profit). Questions would have swirled around the sustainability of Heinz's opex cuts and the fate of Kraft's 22,000 employees. But it's Warren, not Gordon — so such a narrative is unimaginable.

It's not totally clear if Deutsche Bank is condemning Buffett's deal, or applauding his tactics, or pointing out the hypocrisy of media coverage.

But what is clear is that Buffett just got put very, very close to Gekko, who came to personify all that was wrong with Wall Street in the 1980s and in many ways still does.

Boom.

Which is easier - Warren Buffett - Daytrader SELLING THE HOLY GRAIL.

thenews 2015.04.03 19:08 #14

Warren Buffett is Everything That’s Wrong With America

I think I’ve never understood the American – and international – fascination with money, with gathering wealth as the no. 1 priority in one’s life. What looks even stranger to me is the idolization of people who have a lot of money. Like these people are per definition smarter or better than others. It seems obvious that most of them are probably just more ruthless, that they have less scruples, and that their conscience is less likely to get in the way of their money and power goals.

America may idolize no-one more than Warren Buffett, the man who has propelled his fund, Berkshire Hathaway, into riches once deemed unimaginable. For most people, Buffett symbolizes what is great about American society and its economic system. For me, he’s the symbol of everything that’s going wrong.

Last week, Buffett announced a plan to merge a number of ‘food’ companies in a deal he set up with Brazilian 3G Capital. For some reason, they all have German names (I’m not sure why that is or what it means, if anything): Heinz, Kraft, Oscar Mayer. Reuters last week summed up a few of the ‘foods’ involved:

His move on Wednesday to inject Velveeta cheese, Jell-O, Lunchables, Oscar Mayer wieners, and Kool-Aid into his portfolio, stuffs an already amply supplied larder. The additions came from the acquisition of Kraft Foods Group Inc by H.J. Heinz Co, which is controlled by 3G Capital and Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. His larder already included everything from Burger King’s Triple Whopper burgers, Coca-Cola soft drinks and Tim Horton donuts to See’s Candies and Dairy Queen icecream Blizzards, as well as such Heinz brands as Tomato Ketchup, Ore-Ida fries, bagel bites and T.G.I. Friday’s mozzarella sticks.

Isn’t it curious to see that once people have more than enough to eat, they sort of make up for that by drastically lowering the quality of their food, like there’s some sort of balance that needs to be found? Give them more than plenty, and they’ll start using it to poison themselves.

The key term here, the one that tells you where this goes awry, is what in economics is called ‘externalities’. Something large industries are very good at circumventing. The larger the are, the better they get at it. Mostly this has to do with environmental destruction as a result of resource extraction, but the razing of large swaths of natural habitat for the construction of highways and suburbs that make people use more products provided by the oil industry, is a good example too. That and the direct effect these products have on people’s physical health.

Buffett, the supposed genius, can only do these deals because nobody demands anybody to pay for the externalities that arise as a result of Warren pushing crap posing as food upon the American people. And then when he’s done getting even richer off of poisoning your kids, he’ll donate billions to their well-being.

But in a better and wiser world, Warren should pay into the health care system right now, he should pay for the obesity and diabetes costs his ventures and investments are going to cause. And he should do so in advance, not just after the fact in some warped and distorted kind of philanthropy. Warren Buffett kills American kids for profit. Huge profits.

The ballooning waistlines of America can be traced back, in a very simple and straight line, to the sorts of ‘food’ that Buffett’s new conglomerate produces. That’s where type 2 diabetes comes from. This is not some vague future scare scenario, it’s here and it’s now. As someone in a poor black community said a few years back: ‘we’re raising a generation of blind amputees’.

And it’s of course not just Buffett, the poisoning and degradation of America’s food runs across and through industries, both vertically and horizontally. The insanity of corn syrup and processed food ranges from Monsanto to Cargill to McDo’s to a zillion other companies and products. Who, as an industry, have managed to keep any responsibility, let alone litigation, at bay.

Who would even dream of taking McDonald’s to court for poisoning American kids? In the present set-up, it would be an impossible and unwinnable case. But that’s not because the accusation is absurd or even far-fetched. It’s because the narrative is that, even if it could be proven, people still have the right to choose to eat what they want.

The companies get the profits, society at large gets the damage. It’s the ultimate form of the Tragedy of the Commons. If you allow people – and companies – to dump the negative consequences, and the costs, of their undertakings on the public, they will, and they can get very rich off of that.

Yeah, Warren has Coke and Utz Potato Stix for breakfast. What a great story… But does that mean he is too thick to understand what happens in America? Does he not see the bulging waistlines? Or is his own bottom line simply that much more important? Does Warren Buffett consider his own profits way more important than the future of America’s children?

You could be forgiven for thinking so, couldn’t you? Warren Buffett is revered all over the place, but in reality, he’s the schoolbook example of everything that’s wrong with America. That whole money before and over anything else (including people’s health and well-being) mentality.

It makes people stupid, and it makes for stupid people. And sick ones, too. It’s their own choice, though, and their own responsibility, advocates of the model will say. All the industry does is help them make that choice by bombarding them with endless feel-good ads. But is that really a good idea if and when it means the world’s health care systems threaten to implode because of it?

Like many other industries, Buffett’s crap-for-food enterprise would not nearly be as profitable (probably not even viable) if it were to be charged for the damage it does to society and the people living in it. That’s what’s wrong with the current American economic model, and Warren epitomizes this.

This Tragedy of the Commons abuse is so ingrained in the economy that it’s hard to see how it can be changed. And that does not bode well for anyone except the Warren Buffetts profiteering from it.

source

EX4 File with no As a subscriber, do payments for signal provider

techmac 2015.04.03 21:15 #15

Finally someone that does not adore him

The man is a common thief

myname 2015.04.04 19:02 #16

techmac:
Finally someone that does not adore him The man is a common thief

That will not change anything

And there are others just as bad as him

thenews 2015.04.11 19:38 #17

Warning: Stocks Will Collapse by 50%

It is only a matter of time before the stock market plunges by 50% or more, according to several reputable experts.

“We have no right to be surprised by a severe and imminent stock market crash,” explains Mark Spitznagel, a hedge fund manager who is notorious for his hugely profitable billion-dollar bet on the 2008 crisis. “In fact, we must absolutely expect it."

Unfortunately Spitznagel isn’t alone.

“We are in a gigantic financial asset bubble,” warns Swiss adviser and fund manager Marc Faber. “It could burst any day.”

Faber doesn’t hesitate to put the blame squarely on President Obama’s big-government policies and the Federal Reserve’s risky low-rate policies, which, he says, “penalize the income earners, the savers who save, your parents — why should your parents be forced to speculate in stocks and in real estate and everything under the sun?”

Billion-dollar investor Warren Buffett is rumored to be preparing for a crash as well. The “Warren Buffett Indicator,” also known as the “Total Market Cap to GDP Ratio,” is breaching sell-alert status and a collapse may happen at any moment.

So with an inevitable crash looming, what are Main Street investors to do? One option is to sell all your stocks and stuff your money under the mattress, and another option is to risk everything and ride out the storm.

But according to Sean Hyman, founder of Absolute Profits, there is a third option.

“There are specific sectors of the market that are all but guaranteed to perform well during the next few months,” Hyman explains. “Getting out of stocks now could be costly.”

How can Hyman be so sure?

He has access to a secret Wall Street calendar that has beaten the overall market by 250% since 1968. This calendar simply lists 19 investments (based on sectors of the market) and 38 dates to buy and sell them, and by doing so, one could turn $1,000 into as much as $178,000 in a 20-year time frame.

Here is Warren Buffett's $100 billion mistake - page 2