Due to an unexpected outbreak of rationality (and perhaps embarrassment), the Treasury department has rejected requests of Goldman Sachs and Berkshire Hathaway to purchase Tax Credits from Fannie Mae.
This paper transaction would have provided precisely zero value to the taxpayers, and allowed these firms to add to the piles of bailout monies already received by avoiding billions of dollars in taxes otherwise legally owed. It would have been a license to steal.
The sheer arrogance, the colossal gall involved boggles the mind.
And while we expect this sort of behavior from the Vampire Squid — they take pride at Goldman in not just being whores, but in being the highest paid callgirls in town — it is stunning to see such behavior from the usually politically astute Oracle Tentacles of Omaha. For Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to team up with Goldman Sachs (which he now owns a healthy chunk of) is a bit of a revelation: We have been spun by his genteel manner, his aw shucks down-home-isms, his off Wall Street, less bloodthirsty approach to investing, into somehow believing he was different.
We have been duped.
We should not have been. Buffett has been the biggest shareholder in Moody’s — a collection of filthy whores and pederasts who were one of the main contributors to the economic collapse — should have raised serious questions as to his judgment in our minds. That he sat by silently as they did their worst, sodomizing the nations credit system for fun and profit was a powerful indictment of Buffett as someone far different than his public persona. In retrospect, as Moody’s was helping to destroy America’s financial system, his merely spouting off aphorisms about about Financial WMDs now looks too cute by half.
Those of you who used to respect Warren Buffett might consider moving him off your increasingly short list of participants in the marketplace who behave ethically. This crude attempt to steal billions — coming on the heels of the bullshit about “Investing in America” by buying Railroads — is a shock to me; perhaps that is a testament to my naivete.
Perhaps the Oracle of Omaha has been infected by a new flu variant, the H1N1 GS mutation. It is usually non fatal to the host, but destroys its reputation . . .
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See also:
Fannie Mae’s Sale of Tax Credits Is A Bad Deal, Treasury Says
Dawn Kopecki
Bloomberg, Nov. 7 2009
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=adO7ckroZNOc&pos=6
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