Faces In The News
Buffett: Berkshire Hathaway CEO Blasts 'Sharecropper's Society'
Chris Noon, 03.07.05, 7:57 AM ET

NEW YORK - Doers and doings in business, entertainment and technology:
Is the Oracle of Omaha losing his touch? Billionaire investor Warren
Buffett apologized to Berkshire Hathaway investors for a dud deal year.
"My hope was to make several multibillion-dollar acquisitions that would
add new and significant streams of earnings to the many we already
have," he wrote in his much-anticipated annual letter to shareholders.
"But I have struck out." Buffett promised to act quickly on good
investments in the $5 billion to $20 billion ballpark, but Jeremiahs are
already predicting a gloomy 2005 for Buffet and Berkshire's vice
chairman, Charlie Munger. "He won't find anything this year," said Steve
Kaplan, a professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of
Business. "Since he likes to buy things cheap, it's harder to find." Of
course we all should have Buffett's batting average: Even without deal
making, Berkshire Hathaway's net worth rose $8.3 billion in 2004. And
tossing the Berkshire Hathaway hair shirt aside, Buffett blasted the
U.S. for its continued trade deficit. "A country that is now aspiring to
an 'Ownership Society' will not find happiness in--and I'll use
hyperbole here for emphasis--a 'Sharecropper's Society,'" Buffett wrote,
"But that's precisely where our trade policies, supported by Republicans
and Democrats alike, are taking us."

Boating tie in -- is Warren related to Jimmy? -- Note also he is
critical of BOTH major parties.