GlennBeck.com
8/15/2011
Warren Buffet was talking to noted English language butcher Tom Brokaw, and made one of the dumbest arguments of all time while arguing for higher taxes. First of all, Warren, WRITE A CHECK to the IRS if you want to give more. Second, he makes the ‘my secretary has a higher tax rate than I do’ argument by comparing his capital gains tax to their income tax. Capital gains vs. income tax. Not the same thing. Glenn has more including a look into the disturbing, severely slurred speech of Tom Brokaw in the clip above.
Related: Bailouts to benefit billionaire Buffett’s fortunes from April 2009.
…Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, hasn’t received any of that federal aid, but Berkshire, based in Omaha, Neb., owns stock valued at more than $13 billion in the top recipients of TARP funds, including Goldman Sachs Group, US Bancorp, American Express and Bank of America, which analysts all thought were in deep trouble before TARP was approved in October.
That total, the Sacramento Bee found, ranks Berkshire fifth among all investors in TARP-assisted companies. Berkshire’s TARP holdings constitute 30 percent of its publicly disclosed stock portfolio, and that proportion reflects at least twice as much dependence on bailed-out banks as any other large investor.
Berkshire, for instance, is the largest shareholder in San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, which got $25 billion — 91 percent of the TARP funds invested in institutions headquartered in California. Buffett increased his bank holdings in September, while he was arguing in the media that Congress should approve the bailout to prevent the collapse of the global financial system.
”If I didn’t think the government was going to act, I would not be doing anything this week,” Buffett told CNBC after investing $5 billion in Goldman Sachs. ”I am, to some extent, betting on the fact that the government will do the rational thing here and act promptly.”…
Related: Advisors’ departures leave Obama short-handed on the economy, Los Angeles Times
As he confronts the threat of another recession and turmoil in the financial markets, President Obama is being advised by an economic team that is noticeably short on big-name players — potentially hurting his ability to find solutions and sell them to Wall Street, Congress and the American public.
“When you ask about the economic team, it’s kind of like, ‘What economic team?'” said Edward Mills, a financial policy analyst with FBR Capital Markets. “They are very thin at a very critical time.”…
…Perhaps more telling, there no longer is a formal economic briefing in the Oval Office every morning, a gathering in which Summers, Romer, Geithner and other key advisors assessed the data and batted around ideas with Obama…
