We Finally Figured Out Why Warren Buffett Hates Gold

By Phillip Patrick for Birch Gold Group

It’s a pleasure to reflect on the achievements of legendary investor Warren Buffett. He’s both chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and is worth about $50 billion today.

The “Oracle of Omaha” is undoubtedly the most celebrated and revered living businessman in the U.S. today. He made his fortune by investing in businesses based on fundamental analysis, and Berkshire Hathaway has grown twice as fast as the typical American business.

Tens of thousands attend annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meetings, and millions more scrutinize his annual shareholder letter for lessons they can apply to their own investing.

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How Warren Buffett and Bill Gates Make a Killing Off the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

Guest Post by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

Warren Buffett’s vertically integrated investments in the production of high fructose corn syrup — a key ingredient in highly processed foods and contributor to obesity in kids — generates massive profits for himself and Bill Gates.

Childhood obesity rates could double among boys and increase by 125% among girls by 2035, according to a new global report by the World Obesity Federation.

In the U.S., childhood obesity rates tripled in the past three decades, increasing kids’ risks of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other chronic illnesses.

A report last month by The Hill cited multiple contributors to the obesity epidemic, including too much screen time, lack of access to healthy food and socioeconomic factors. Exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals is also known to play a big role in childhood obesity, studies show.

There’s one thing most experts agree on: Increased consumption of highly processed foods is a leading contributor to the childhood obesity epidemic.

But here’s a lesser-known fact: High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the lynchpin of the processed food industry — and the HFCS industry has generated massive profits for Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, two of the world’s richest men.

‘Is the world’s richest man made primarily out of corn syrup?’

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WAS TRUMP THE MULE?

“Excellence, he is known as the Mule. He is spoken of little, in a factual sense, but I have gathered the scraps and fragments of knowledge and winnowed out the most probable of them. He is apparently a man of neither birth nor standing. His father, unknown. His mother, dead in childbirth. His upbringing, that of a vagabond. His education, that of the tramp worlds, and the backwash alleys of space. He has no name other than that of the Mule, a name reportedly applied by himself to himself, and signifying, by popular explanation, his immense physical strength, and stubbornness of purpose.” ― Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire

“The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity—a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.”Isaac Asimov, Foundation

In March 2017, a mere two months after the stunningly unexpected victory of Donald Trump over the Deep State hand picked representative of dark forces – Hillary Clinton, I wrote a three-part article based upon Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, attempting to connect Trump’s elevation as the Gray Champion of this Fourth Turning to the plot of Asimov’s masterpiece. The three articles: Foundation – Fall of the American Galactic Empire; Foundation and Empire: Is Donald Trump the Mule?; and Second Foundation: Empire Crumbling, landed with a dud, generating few views and not many comments.

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Did Buffett Just Bet Against The US? Berkshire Buys Barrick Gold, Dumps Goldman

Via ZeroHedge

This is going to get awkward.

Berkshire Hathaway’s latest 13F just dropped and contained inside is a signal that none other than the Oracle Of Omaha appears to now be quietly betting against The United States.

Why? Because for years – in fact for as long we can remember – Warren Buffet has denigrated gold:

In a speech delivered at Harvard in 1998, Buffett said:

“(Gold) gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.

He once famously said:

Gold is a way of going long on fear, and it has been a pretty good way of going long on fear from time to time. But you really have to hope people become more afraid in a year or two years than they are now. And if they become more afraid you make money, if they become less afraid you lose money, but the gold itself doesn’t produce anything.”

In his 2011 letter, Buffett noted that for $9.6 trillion you could buy “pile a” — all of the gold in the world, or “pile b” — the entire US cropland (400 million acres) plus 16 ExxonMobils and still have another $1 trillion left over.

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Buffett and Munger’s Current State of Confusion Speaks Volumes

From Birch Gold Group

berkshire hathaway

When the vice chairman of one of the world’s largest investment firms and one of the most well-known names on Wall Street both “throw up their hands” in a time of economic crisis, it’s a good idea to pay close attention.

We’re referring to Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, both of whom seem baffled by the current state of affairs. Says Munger:

I would say basically we’re like the captain of a ship when the worst typhoon that’s ever happened comes… We just want to get through the typhoon, and we’d rather come out of it with a whole lot of liquidity.

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Warren Buffett’s worst year since the stock market crashed…

Guest Post by Simon Black

Warren Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, didn’t outperform the S&P 500 last year.

Berkshire Hathaway grew slightly in 2019, but its performance lagged far behind the S&P 500 stock market index.

That’s an anomaly for Buffett. He’s handily outperformed the S&P 500 for decades, endearing himself to millions of investors along the way.

It’s interesting that Berkshire Hathaway typically has its worst years just before stocks crash.

In 1999, just prior to the Dot-Com Bust of 2000, the company’s book value (Buffett’s preferred measure of performance) grew just 0.5%, while the S&P grew 21%. The stock market peaked just a few months later.

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One look at this and you’ll get why Warren Buffett sits on a record cash pile

Via Marketwatch

At the midpoint of the year, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A, +0.82% was sitting on a record cash pile of $122 billion, leading one longtime shareholder to dump his position because, as he recently explained, “thumb-sucking has not cut the Heinz KHC, +0.84% mustard during the Great Bull Market.”

But why has the Oracle of Omaha opted to add to his massive cash hoard even as the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.06% and the S&P 500 SPX, +1.18%both up nicely in Tuesday’s session — continue to bang out record highs?

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Gold’s long-term gains have even outperformed Warren Buffett…

Guest Post by Simon Black

Warren Buffett, despite his extraordinary investment success, has a rather famous and long-standing love/hate relationship with precious metals.

Maybe it started with his dad– Congressman Howard Buffett of Nebraska– who, as a staunch advocate for the gold standard, argued to his colleagues on Capitol Hill that “paper money systems have always wound up with collapse and economic chaos.”

Warren himself acquired a record-setting 128 million ounces of silver back in the late 1990s… which he later sold at a profit in the early 2000s.

But to listen to him talk about precious metals these days, he’s always negative.

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Five Insights Gleaned From The Movie “Unplanned”

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Over the weekend, I was where I needed to pass some time and thought an early afternoon matinee would do the trick. Although I was not overly enthused to see any of the films currently showing, I chose to see Unplanned.  Mainly because the title seemed apropos just then and the movie’s starting time fit my schedule. Moreover, it looked to be a political film about the controversial subject of abortion and was, in fact, based on a true story.

The tale told of the life and times of Abby Johnson, a headstrong young lady from Texas who became one of the youngest Planned Parenthood clinic directors in the United States. She resigned in 2009 after seeing a fetus at 13 weeks gestation recoil in pain during an ultrasound-guided vacuum aspiration abortion.

The film portrayed the abortion industry, as exactly that, an industry whereby Planned Parenthood profited most from procedures terminating pregnancies; even to the point of demanding quotas from its clinics. Furthermore, distinct and contrasting parallels were drawn between those who believed they were advocating on behalf of women’s rights with those who believed life began at conception.

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Even Warren Buffett gets it: They’re coming for your money

Guest Post by Simon Black

By the year 1380, the Hundred Years’ War between England and France had already been raging for decades.

And the war wasn’t going very well for England.

France had managed to recapture most of the territories they had lost early in the war; meanwhile French naval fleets were ravaging the coastline of southern England and destroying English commercial vessels.

To make matters worse, England had recently been devastated by the Bubonic Plague, which killed nearly a third of the population.

Most of England’s military leadership was dead. And the country’s new King was just a 13-year old boy known as Richard II.

The costs of the war were mounting, and England was rapidly running out of money.

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How low will the S&P 500 go? Buffett and Shiller know

Via Marketwatch

Every trader’s secret wish is to be psychic. If we could only know in advance whether the market was going to go up or down.

Well, good luck trying to predict next year’s return—or even just tomorrow’s. But surprisingly, there are several recognized methods for projecting the S&P 500’s SPX, +0.22%  return in the next 7 to 15 years, and they’re pretty good.

Decade-length forecasts won’t help any day traders make big profits this week. But longer-term investors can benefit a lot from these forward-looking estimates. Whatever goal you may be saving money for—a kid’s college tuition or a financial-freedom day that may be 10 years in the future—you want the answer to two questions:

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Once again Warren Buffett has given us a major warning that everything is expensive

Guest Post by Simon Black

Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, just announced a blockbuster quarter, earning nearly $7 billion.

And Buffett’s still sitting on over $100 billion of cash. That means he’s got enough money to buy almost any company he wants, anywhere in the world.

But the only move Buffett made in the last quarter was buying $928 million of Berkshire Hathaway stock.

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10 YEARS LATER – NO LESSONS LEARNED

“A variety of investors provided capital to financial companies, with which they made irresponsible loans and took excessive risks. These activities resulted in real losses, which have largely wiped out the shareholder equity of the companies. But behind that shareholder equity is bondholder money, and so much of it that neither depositors of the institution nor the public ever need to take a penny of losses. Citigroup, for example, has $2 trillion in assets, but also has $600 billion owed to its own bondholders. From an ethical perspective, the lenders who took the risk to finance the activities of these companies are the ones that should directly bear the cost of the losses.”John Hussman – May 2009

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Wall Street/Fed/Treasury created financial disaster of 2008/2009. What should have happened was an orderly liquidation of the criminal Wall Street banks who committed the greatest control fraud in world history and the disposition of their good assets to non-criminal banks who did not recklessly leverage their assets by 30 to 1, while fraudulently issuing worthless loans to deadbeats and criminals. But we know that did not happen.

You, the taxpayer, bailed the criminal bankers out and have been screwed for the last decade with negative real interest rates and stagnant real wages, while the Wall Street scum have raked in risk free billions in profits provided by their captured puppets at the Federal Reserve. The criminal CEOs and their executive teams of henchmen have rewarded themselves with billions in bonuses while risk averse grandmas “earn” .10% on their money market accounts while acquiring a taste for Fancy Feast savory salmon cat food.

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Warren Buffett Isn’t Buying… Why Should Anyone Else?

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Over the weekend on Saturday morning, amid its usual fanfare and attention, Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway released its annual report to the public.

This is a pretty big deal each year. Investors and financial reporters typically wait with baited breath to hear what the Oracle himself has to say in his legendary annual letter.

Buffett’s topics in previous letters have covered a lot of ground– the state of the US economy, value investing education, why Wall Street is so deeply flawed, commentary on financial markets, etc.

This year’s letter was, as usual, quite interesting… but primarily because of what Buffett said about his own business.

Berkshire Hathaway is an enormous enterprise; it’s essentially a $500 billion holding company that owns dozens of smaller businesses, all of which collectively generate tens of billions in free cash flow.

Buffett’s primary mission is to acquire more businesses and expand Berkshire’s portfolio… and then ensure that each of those subsidiaries has top quality management to grow the cashflow.

And that’s what was so interesting about this year’s letter: Buffett couldn’t really do his job.

According to Warren Buffett himself:

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Buffett: “I Would Buy A Five-Year Put On Every Cryptocurrency”

Warren Buffett doubled down on his criticism of bitcoin Wednesday during an interview with CNBC, where he said he’s almost certain the cryptocurrency craze “will end badly” and that the current runup in value will be fleeting.

But paradoxically, he also admitted that he “doesn’t know anything” about digital currencies after saying he would eagerly buy five-year puts on “every one of the cryptocurrencies.”

“In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending,” said Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

“When it happens or how or anything else I don’t know,” he added in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” from Omaha, Nebraska.

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FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE: IS DONALD TRUMP THE MULE?

In Part One of this article I analyzed the similarities of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy to Strauss & Howe’s Fourth Turning, trying to assess how Donald Trump’s ascension to power fits into the theories put forth by those authors. Now I will compare Trump to the most interesting character in Asimov’s classic – The Mule.

The Mule

“A horse having a wolf as a powerful and dangerous enemy lived in constant fear of his life. Being driven to desperation, it occurred to him to seek a strong ally. Whereupon he approached a man, and offered an alliance, pointing out that the wolf was likewise an enemy of the man. The man accepted the partnership at once and offered to kill the wolf immediately, if his new partner would only co-operate by placing his greater speed at the man’s disposal. The horse was willing, and allowed the man to place bridle and saddle upon him.

The man mounted, hunted down the wolf, and killed him. “The horse, joyful and relieved, thanked the man, and said: ‘Now that our enemy is dead, remove your bridle and saddle and restore my freedom.’ “Whereupon the man laughed loudly and replied, ‘Never!’ and applied the spurs with a will.”Isaac Asimov, Foundation

I had not thought about the Foundation Trilogy for decades, until someone recently mentioned it in a comment on my website. They pondered whether Trump’s arrival on the scene represented The Mule’s advent during the decline of the Galactic Empire. Trump’s numerous enemies would love to portray him as an evil mutant freakish warlord, bent on using his persuasion powers to mislead the populace into doing his bidding. I don’t necessarily see Trump as The Mule, but as a disrupting factor, disturbing the best laid plans of the establishment and helping reveal the hidden agendas of the Deep State.

Seldon’s science of psychohistory was outstanding at predicting the behavior of large populations but worthless in trying to predict what an individual might do. The emergence of the Mule, a mentalic mutant with an acute telepathic ability to modify the emotions of human beings, could not have been predicted by the Seldon Plan, focused as it was on the statistical movements of vast numbers of peoples and populations across the galaxy.

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