Reddit mentions of The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

There seems to be a lot mindless hate here toward him, but being halfway through his biography, The Snowball i see him as a brilliant, humble and rational man, who admires honesty above all things. The hatred we seem to have towards the banking industry culture (and also large investors by association) is vastly different to the way Buffet has approached his life, and i don't mean just by living frugally.

Read the chapter on Salomon where a large financial co in 1991 was thoroughly mismanaged and almost went under. It had a casino like approach (sound familiar?), and whole branches of employees who still expected to be paid huge bonuses as the co was almost going under. The way Buffet approached this when he was made interim president was something quite eye opening considering this all happened in 91.

He has always argued that the rich pay too little taxes. The anecdote about his secretary is something he's been talking about for decades (and not just now when Obama is trying to use some of Buffet's clout to push for these tax increases). He's also consistently argued that capital gains tax should be increased and that the estate tax should never have been reduced/eliminated. He is a big belief that America should never develop a rich class, and that the society created and funded by the government that allowed the rich to get rich in the first place should be given to every one and every generation. The ovarian lottery concept is something i always bring up to those who believe that they earned everything on their on merit (next time someone argues for tax cuts for the rich ask them whether if they had a choice where they were born would they choose to be born in the US with taxes or be born in Bangladesh and pay no tax).

Even some of his conduct has helped shaped financial systems for the better, like making Coca Cola (who hes on the board for) be one of the first companies to put stock options for management on the books. This helped other big co came around and it eventually became mandatory (The very fact that it was optional before seems ludicrous, and shows the many ways the financial industry simply views regulations as constraints on maximizing profit rather than the rules that govern a system to ensure it works efficiently)

There a whole lot of other stuff and I really recommend people read that book (though it is long), merely for a glance at how it is possible to be a moral and ethical investor and manager. It's obviously slanted toward showing him in a favourable light but that doesn't negate any of the good he's done (and i havent even mentioned the philanthropic work hes doing with Gates, or the fact hes giving nearly all of his money away upon his death)

Warren Buffett is one of those people who is absolutely brilliant at one thing while being nearly dysfunctional in most other things.

Read his biography if you are more curious about him as a person.

Warren Buffet definitely has a finely-crafted image. He doesn't exactly come from poverty; his dad was a multi-term US Congressman.

If you read "Snowball" though, you see where a lot of who he is comes from; he owned a farm when he was 13 and had a ton of side businesses on the side growing up. A lot of his business sense is innate. [source]

However the book also goes into how screwed up his life is b/c he's successful, and ends up being more of a cautionary tale than anything else. He never had anything resembling a happy marriage and largely ignored his kids growing up. I think while he comes across as a well-balanced 'everyman', his screwed-up personal life really reflects how he sacrificed so much of his life in running Berkshire Hathaway.

I suggest turning that 10k into 100k and more, by investing in a safe long term financial product.

Perhaps spend the 25 bucks or so it takes to buy Warren Buffet's Snowball biography. Once you understand how money can work, you'll begin spending less, saving more.

>He has.

No, he has not. I've actually read that book. Have you? It's a book to corporate America.

It offers nothing in the way of explanation for the 'have nots' that he so recently loves to wax on about.

I've also read The Snowball - the most comprehensive book about his life, loves, thoughts and mannerisms. It also contains no such advice.

Read both books - or even their book jackets - and then look at my previous comment again.

Your comment about this stock picking method is also off a bit. Buffet is famous for his "value based" picks but he doesn't talking about the value until long after it's paid off for him. He doesn't tell the 'have nots' what to invest in while he's investing in it. He only tells them "they should have" long after.

And if he's so immune to "loose corporate ethics" why did he make millions buying up crashing Goldman Sach's stock a few months before it strangely took off again? This was less than 2 years ago.

Buffet does exactly the same stuff he criticizes his associates about but stops every so often at Good Morning America to cry about how little receptionist makes. I used to have tremendous respect for the man. It's sad what he's allowed his liberal guilt to turn into.

I read it in this somewhere, his wife and children got generous shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock. I forgot the amount, but somewhere in the ballpark of 20 million worth of stock (at the time) to each of his kids, enough to live well on but not exactly uber rich.