Quote from sKaLpZ:
here's my take on Buffett.
what he does, I think, is a scam.
my understanding is, when you buy a share(s) of his company, BH, instructions are to never sell it.
right there, anything that is never sold will rise in value because there is no supply and even modest demand will make the price skyrocket.
this is what has happened with Buffett's company shares.
Next, he looks for already profitable companies that are well run, usually successful owners that started the company and are still running it well.
that is not that hard to do. yes, 90% of companies go broke but that still leaves a full 10% that have success - few have great success!
so Warren will make the owner an offer to 'buy' the company and manage the money - guess who gets a good payoff?
the company owner! he doesn't care about the piss on employees, he only cares about himself!
and now the owner feels like he has "the great master money mind, Buffett" backing him so he feels like god.
and Buffett has everything to win and nothing to lose because if the company doesn't work all the much harder, he just tosses the company like so much fodder.
On the other hand if the company continues to make money, Buffett takes all the money, gives the owner some, has a payroll company pay the employees, and heaps up the cash.
that is why Berkshire Hathaway has all that cash heaped up that Buffett doesn't know what to do with because it is not that he is the great financier he tries to make himself out to be, he just runs this scam on whatever suckers bite into it.
and there are plenty of suckers out there.
the rest is simple: he just never spends any of his money - consequently he gets richer and richer.
most other people, if they had a billion would blow half of it. when WB had a billion he was tighter than Bob Hope with it, thus he got more and more.
It takes money to make money.
It's a simple formula. It's called, fake out the world.