Buffett, Warren

Warren, I'd like to wish you a very sincere happy birthday. 

> You were born just a few months before my Dad, and I picture the two of you celebrating many more birthdays to come.

> I've been squelching the rumor that you keep a countdown clock on your desk that ticks away your life expectancy. Yes, this rumor actually is circulating, and as we both know, it's not true.

I've waited awhile to do this. It's been fun watching the commentary, so I thought, why not give blog readers a roundup of media coverage on the FCIC testimony, beginning with the first leak that Buffett would testify. Pls note, the balance here reflects the actual coverage. Media outlets that played it straight, just the facts include Bloomberg BusinessWeek. CNN.

We watched the DVD of the movie The September Issue this week. This is the story of Anna Wintour, editor in chief of Vogue magazine, her relationship with her creative director Grace Coddington, and the conflicts and choices that occurred in creating the mammoth (pre-crash) September 2007 issue of Vogue, which was thicker by 100 pages than any issue of the magazine ever published.

Yvette Kantrow complains that Buffett gets a pass from media in this column in The Deal magazine. She makes the point that:

Alex Crippen is reporting on CNBC that Black Swan author Nassim Taleb says Buffett may just be lucky. Taleb "says there isn't enough evidence to show that Warren Buffett's skill, and not his good luck, is responsible for the billionaire's enormous investing success over the decades.

Taleb is quoted as saying:

One of the questions I am asked most often is "how did you organize all that material for The Snowball?" Fortunately, I had five years to do it. I built a file room in my house to hold all the material. Now I'm trying to declutter.

My recent Bloomberg column on Wall Street ethics got me thinking about the common questions people ask in me interviews about Warren Buffett.  For example, isn't Buffett a hypocrite for getting special deals like Goldman Sachs? Don't the special deals invalidate his track record?