Hi, Marvin:
You described the article as being on "the contradictions of Warren Buffett and charitable giving in general." I wish there was more of the latter. The content relating to the former seems as one-sided and under-informed as the typical output of the average 'warblogger.'
>From the article:
>Buffett has inevitably left a trail of closed
>facilities and ruined communities behind him.
>...
>In 1985, Buffett shut down the Berkshire Hathaway
>textile operations in New Bedford, Massachusetts,
>throwing 425 people out of work.
The author goes on to call Buffett an 'asset stripper,' though he neglects to mention that Buffett became chairman of the largely unprofitable Berkshire a full 15 years earlier. Why would an asset stripper wait a decade and a half to suck blood?
There are further misapprehensions of fact, such as the brief mention of USG. The company had rather miniscule amounts of asbestos in the gypsum slurry it used in manufacturing wallboard. It was inevitably included in the class action asbestos suits of the 1990s, quickly ran through its insurance coverage, and filed Chapter 11 to protect against further lawsuits (over 100k had been filed at the time). The number of workers filing claims against the company was not great (in fact, many claimants had no apparent connection to the company or its products) and USG's average employee count from its bankruptcy to present - it profitably operated as a debtor in posession the entire time - is almost unchanged. Actually, Buffett committed to injecting equity into the business when many thought the company would be wiped out entirely. His prescience essentially saved the company then and will earn him a nice payday soon (and further scorn from Walsh, no doubt).
Walsh goes way overboard chalking up various destructive episodes to Buffett, but his general case could be made. He could have developed the one insight worth anything in his article (of a fundamentally decent guy being pressured by a system to act against his decency), but he chose not to. Had he done so he would have had to have discussed Buffett/Buffett's wife's/Charlie Munger's bankrolling and support for the appeal in the first (pre Roe v Wade) case finding anti-abortion laws unconstitutional. He would have had to discuss Buffett's anti-segregationism and how it threatened his prospects as a young fund manager in need of investors in early 60s Omaha, etc.
Most interesting would have been an examination of Buffett's early support for Black banks...and his withdrawl of support when institutions he helped endow failed to profit. The story of an uncommonly clever man trying to reconcile strong profit motive with a similarly strong sense of justice - all to wildly mixed results, at least before giving his fortune away - would have been a great read.
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