Ira Stoll on Warren Buffett's Boast at Taxpayers' Expense
(cc)
The second-richest American, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, has given the March 17 issue of Fortune magazine an excerpt of his forthcoming annual letter to investors. The tale of two successful Buffett purchases is illuminating, but not quite in the way Buffett intends. Ira Stoll notes that "certain fundamentals" of Buffett-style investing are "buy things from the government, because you can sometimes get bargains from bureaucrats who have no idea of the value of what they are selling, and who have a mandate just to sell the stuff off quickly." In other words, while Buffett boasts of his great real estate bargains, the ones paying the bills are the taxpayers.