Warren Buffett: "No One Can Stop Too Big To Fail"
A couple of bums fighting over the taxpayer's wallet...
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Andrew Frye of Bloomberg has a devestating piece out today that highlights testimony Warren Buffett gave to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) earlier in the year about how taxpayers will always be on the hook for Too-Big-To-Fail institutions. Buffett told the Commission:
- “You will always have institutions that are too big to fail, and sometimes they will fail. We still have them now. We’ll have them after your commission report.”
As Frye points out, this sits squarely at odds with assertions from the Obama administration that the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill ended TBTF once and for all. We've even got video proof from the Obankster himself.
Debt, Lies and Wall Street Bailouts...
Video: Obama pats himself on the back for the passage of the Dodd-Frank Financial "Reform" bill, saying there will be no more Wall St. bailouts
The clip starts playing automatically at the 3:40 mark...
- "Because of Financial Reform, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall St's mistakes."
- "There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period."
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Buffett Tells FCIC It's Powerless to Stop `Too Big to Fail'
by Andrew Frye (Bloomberg)
Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that taxpayers will always be on the hook for collapses at the biggest U.S. companies.
“You will always have institutions that are too big to fail, and sometimes they will fail,” Buffett, 80, told the FCIC in a May 26 interview, according to a recording released by the panel yesterday. “We still have them now. We’ll have them after your commission report.”
The Dodd-Frank financial reform act, enacted in July, was touted by President Barack Obama as a means to ending bailouts and protecting taxpayers from firms that are “too big to fail.” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who made more than $3 trillion of assistance available during the crisis, has said the “too-big-to-fail” issue can be eliminated only when investors believe the U.S. won’t rescue firms.
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Buffett: "Get down on your knees and thank the Lord for Ben Bernanke..."
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Further Reading...
- Simon Johnson: Dead On Arrival - Banks Win, Wall Street Reform Fails, Obama & Geithner Deserve Blame
And don't forget this one...
Feb 11, 2011 at 10:49 PM
Reader Comments (13)
According to the latest Pew poll, 30% of Egyptians are pro-Hezbollah, 49% are pro-Hamas, and 20% “smile” at al-Qaeda. 1 out of every 5 Egyptian favors extreme Islamist terrorist groups, while 1 in every 3 supports revolutionary Islamists in other countries. This does not tell us exactly how many Egyptians would favor an Islamist government in Egypt, but certainly paints a very frightening picture.
Furthermore, 82% of Egyptians want stoning as the punishment for adulterers, 77% prefer whippings and hand amputations for stealing, and 84% want the death penalty for converts from Islam.
link to your polls ...
90% of Americans couldn't find Egypt on a map and 90% of Americans think the "fed" is part of Government .
Smith
Wesson
Glock
Coming to a communist billionaire near you ( I hope).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/10/debit-card-fees_n_821234.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/10/30year-mortgage-rates-top_n_821529.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/09/chris-lee-resigns-after-c_n_821080.html
WAIT, I'm a taxpayer...I want MY MORTGAGE interest deferred for 34 years...
Like Rogers said, Americans abolished 2 central banks before, we need to ONCE AGAIN abolish the central banks AND THE FEDERAL RESERVE!!
http://dailybail.com/home/warren-buffetts-600-million-interest-free-loan-from-taxpayer.html
Jack Lohman
http://MoneyedPoliticians.net
It's no laughing matter, but I couldn't help but chuckle at this. Well said, Jack.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-04/first-wind-to-sell-solar-power-from-utah-to-buffett-unit.html
First Wind Holdings Inc., a Boston-based renewable-energy developer, has agreed to sell power from seven Utah solar farms to a utility owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/B)
Four solar farms planned for Beaver County and three for Iron County will sell power to PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, First Wind said today in a statement. Construction is expected to begin later this year and end by mid-2015.
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Here are a couple of items I had written in my last piece here at the DB. You can find the links and entire articles here by scrolling down the story:
http://dailybail.com/home/why-wind-power-wont-work.html
Buffett buys Pacificorp for $5.1 billion in cash - Background
Striking the second biggest deal of his career and making a major move in the energy industry, billionaire investor Warren Buffett agreed Tuesday to pay $5.1 billion in cash to acquire Western states electric utility PacifiCorp.
Buffet on Hydro
Buffett's MidAmerican starts wind projects before credits end
MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., the power provider owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, completed 300 megawatts of wind farms in California ahead of the expiration of a tax credit at the end of this year.
MidAmerican Renewables LLC completed the 168-megawatt Pinyon Pines Wind I and the 132-megawatt Pinyon Pines Wind II projects near Tehachapi, the Des Moines-based company said today in a statement. The 100 Vestas Wind Systems 3-megawatt turbines will supply Southern California Edison with electricity under long-term contracts.
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More on Buffett at the same story as well:
The Answer Isn't Blowing in the Wind
Warren Buffett can do without a tax break for wind energy.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2014/05/20/warren-buffet-doesnt-need-a-wind-energy-tax-break
Does the “Oracle of Omaha” really need another tax break? It’s a fair question, given the way billionaire Warren Buffet made headlines several years ago with his complaints that his secretary paid more in taxes to the federal government than he did.
Of course, that was back when he was campaigning in support of higher taxes on the so-called “wealthiest Americans” in furtherance of the class envy strategy Democrats like himself, President Barack Obama and their allies in Washington have honed to a razor sharp edge. But now he’s got his hand out for corporate tax breaks that improve the bottom line for his Berkshire Hathaway company and the stock price of all the companies he’s invested in.
Buffet is one of many who is pushing for the reintroduction of the federal Wind Production Tax Credit that expired at the end of 2013. Senate Democrats made sure to add it to the “extenders” package of tax break renewals, but that effort just hit the rocks because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “filled the tree” and wouldn’t let the Republicans offer any amendments. So the credit remains dead, for the moment at least, but it’s sure to come up again. Without it, nothing about wind energy makes any sense.
[READ: The Rules According to Harry]…
There are very few people in the environmental movement that seem to care about the number of birds and other species of flying animals who are being decapitated in mid-flight by giant turbines spinning in the breeze. They also don’t seem to care that wind, which is already unreliable because it doesn’t blow all the time, is also more costly to generate than electricity produced though already proven means, such as natural gas and nuclear power. What they care about is the way the Wind Production Tax Credit makes wind energy attractive on the bottom line, not because it is profitable but because of the way the profits and losses line up against the tax credits.
As my TJS bloleague Nancy Pfotenhauer recently pointed out, Buffet is big on big wind because it helps reduce the corporate tax liability of some companies. “On wind energy we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms,” the billionaire Democrat recently told a Nebraska audience. “That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
That’s quite an admission. We don’t build wind farms because they reduce America’s reliance on energy being imported from unstable regions of the world or because they produce fewer carbon emissions than natural gas or coal-fired electricity plants. And we don’t build them because it’s good public policy leading to the creation of good jobs in America at good wages. The only reason to build them, Buffet said, is the tax breaks given to folks in the business of producing big wind.
[ READ: Big Wind's Bogus Subsidies]
...The whole business isn’t so much a gamble as it is a proven sucker’s bet for anyone putting up the money – in this case you and I. Wind technology is just not sufficiently developed to allow it to take over anything close to base-load power requirements. Instead of trying to pretend it is, and using very expensive examples to do it, why not put the same resources toward producing gains in efficiency in proven power sources? Or, frankly, just not do anything at all?
America is or will soon be, depending on whose analysis you read, a net energy exporter for the first time in decades. There’s no need anymore for subsidies or special tax breaks for any kind of energy, be it wind, solar, natural gas, coal or oil. Warren Buffet doesn’t need another tax break, which is what a restored Wind Production Tax Credit would be to him. If he believes in big wind, let him spend his money and put his capital at risk without you and I having to back his play through tax credits and subsidies.