I understand that Mr. Rolfe Winkler needs to stick it to Warren Buffet to get noticed (it worked for DMX when he dissed on LL Cool J, right?).. but this really seems to be a statistical mirage… instead of evidence of crony-ism. ...
From: www.ritholtz.com
I had lunch last week with Rolfe Winkler, who is an up and comer in the blog world, a thinking man’s Felix Salmon.
He is similarly annoyed with St. Warren — but rather than engage in my sophmoric venom spew, he went to the spreadsheet to discover that Buffet owns major stakes in 8 companies that have received more than $100 billion in government bailouts.
While I understand the point you are making, I think the totals on the chart are pretty misleading. Half of the total amount comes from BAC and STI, though the amounts of Buffet’s investments in both are completely immaterial, both to BRK and to the institutions themselves. To call them “major stakes” is rather misleading in those two cases.
Yep, Rolfe is more anti-establishment than your typical blogger and unlike Felix, doesn’t just take a contrarian stance just for the sake of it.