Where have all the good men gone?
moneyrelations :: Aug.07.2007
I was in the company elevator the other day with my summer reading material in hand when the 20-something year old guy next to me asked, “Who is Warren Buffett?”
Taken aback, I replied “He’s the greatest investor who has ever lived! The third richest man in the world!” When he stepped out of the elevator, I yelled that he should google him.
Feeling superior, I wondered how anyone could not know who Warren Buffett is. Bzzzt! That was me probably a year ago. I had heard the name through Forbes’ yearly filthy rich list but I really didn’t know who he was or what he did. Then I came across Growth In Value’s blog when he was buying Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway shares. At the time, class A shares were around $90k/sh and class B shares were more “reasonable” at $3k-ish US. How on earth can a stock go that high? So, I did some digging and learned about the man himself – his values and his integrity, along with his investment strategies. I’m not going to regurgitate his bio, but I merely want to know if there are any honest people left in the business world. In contrast, we hear about the conviction of Conrad Black in the US and the acquittal of a Bre-X executive in Canada.
Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty recently commented that “enforcement with respect to securities is an embarrassment internationally to Canada,” and urged the provinces to band together to form a national regulator to safeguard against white-collar crime. As a new investor, this is encouraging news but this is hardly a priority for a new election campaign. Once again, it’s up to the investors to do due diligence on management. It may not be in the scale of Bre-X, but who are these people getting paid millions to run companies into the ground?
In the news, Warren Buffett ::
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I too was financially oblivious about a year and a half ago….but I opened up a few retirement accounts, and now it’s all that I want to talk about…
Hah! Hi SavingDiva! Well, there are worse things to be fixated upon
As I was never in debt, I thought I was doing “okay”. But there is so much more to aspire to, eh? Thanks for dropping by 