CRONY CAPITALISM AND HYPOCRISY -- BUFFETT



WARREN BUFFETT AGAIN --and Harry Reid's profound lack of integrity..again

I have written about Warren Buffett several times. His avoidance of taxes with his myriad foundations and contributions to others (Gates e.g.) while pushing for others to pay more is well-known, but few will acknowledge it. Even less care. His reputation as the premier investor protects him. So does his affiliation with politicians -- Democrats, especially President Obama.

I wonder how many are aware of his purchase of a huge bloc of Bank of America stock using pressure from the Obama administration to "convince" BofA's chairman to sell the bloc. There's more, but does anyone care? Crony capitalism!

There is more but it would seem that not many care. On a day when Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid is publicly calling conservatives "liars," disgust causes me to write. Reid is also characterizing the conservative Koch brothers as the leading financial contributors in politics with total disregard for the lack of truth in this charge. They, in fact, are ranked 59 where leading Democratic contributors rank at the top.

The article below is short and not dramatic at all, but it says a lot to those who understand the essence of it. Crony capitalism!

Buffett's Hypocrisy Exposed Yet Again

All you need to know about the New Normal breed of crony capitalism and unbridled hypocrisy is once again best exemplified by the following quote by Charlie Munger - the lifetime business partner of crony capitalist par excellence Warren Buffett - from May 2013, in which he said;

 "I think it is very stupid to allow a system to evolve where half of the trading is a bunch of short term people trying to get information one millionth of a nanosecond ahead of somebody else. It's legalized front-running. I think it is basically evil and I don't think it should have ever been allowed to reach the size that it did. Why should all of us pay a little group of people to engage in legalized front-running of our orders?" 

Noble words Charlie. 

What Munger, however, did not disclose is that as part of the Berkshire Hathaway-owned Business Wire news service, the company was enabling just this "basically evil" frontrunning, by allowing some, those who could afford the hefty fee of course, to make Munger and Buffett even richer and to subscribe to BW's HFT direct news access which gave them a few millisecond headstart and in the process frontrun everyone else.

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