Stock Preacher

Last week Goldman Sachs Group Inc. settled its US$10B debt with the US taxpayer; now, what will they do about Warren Buffett? Last year, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. invested US$5B in Goldman and acquired preferred shares and warrants to buy common stock, making Buffett’s presence large, because of his reputation for integrity and as one of the world’s savviest investors. So what will Buffett, now the 2nd wealthiest man in the United States do? “Basically not much,” said Vahan Janjigian, author of the book ‘Even Buffett Isn’t Perfect.’”He has a history of making fairly large investments in these kinds of companies and sitting back and letting the management team run the company.” Janjigian expects Buffett to sit tight as Berkshire collects US$500M of annual dividends on the preferred shares and earns paper profits on accompanying warrants to buy an additional US$5B of common stock at $115 per share for up to five years.

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Last Tuesday Timothy Geithner unveiled a raft of new measures aimed at returning functionality to the besieged credit markets. Geithner outlined the picture of the latest US recovery attempt, i.e., promoting greater transparency and stricter oversight of both established and new financial stability programs, providing capital to institutions in desperate need of a cash infusion, committing up to US$1T to support consumer and business lending, addressing the housing crisis and reducing foreclosures, and stricter oversight of US taxpayer money. “The American people will be able to see where their tax dollars are going and the return on their government’s investment,” the Treasury Secretary said. “They will be able to see whether the conditions placed on banks are being met and enforced.

They will be able to see whether boards of directors are being responsible with the taxpayer dollars and how they are compensating their executives. And they will be able to see how these actions are affecting the overall flow of lending and the cost of borrowing.” This information will be made available on a new Web site: FinancialStability.gov.

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