Buy American. I Am. 
By WARREN E. BUFFETT

Omaha

THE financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary.

So … I’ve been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I’m talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds. (This description leaves aside my Berkshire Hathaway holdings, which are all committed to philanthropy.) If prices keep looking attractive, my non-Berkshire net worth will soon be 100 percent in United States equities.

Why?

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sur e, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.

Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.

A little history here: During the Depression, the Dow hit its low, 41, on July 8, 1932. Economic conditions, though, kept deteriorating until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933. By that time, the market had al ready advanced 30 percent. Or think back to the early days of World War II, when things were going badly for the United States in Europe and the Pacific. The market hit bottom in April 1942, well before Allied fortunes turned. Again, in the early 1980s, the time to buy stocks was when inflation raged and the economy was in the tank. In short, bad news is an investor’s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.

Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497. 

You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy.

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts. 

Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree. Those investors who cling now to cash are betting they can efficiently time their move away from it later. In waiting for the comfort of good news, they are ignoring Wayne Gretzky’s advice: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”

I don’t like to opine on the stock market, and again I emphasize that I have no idea what the market wil l do in the short term. Nevertheless, I’ll follow the lead of a restaurant that opened in an empty bank building and then advertised: “Put your mouth where your money was.” Today my money and my mouth both say equities. 

Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company

 Barack Obama the first (fill in the blank) president.

of course  it is historic, because he is young, gifted and black.

  I wanted to wait until  the dust settled after the election to comment on the election. of Barak Obama the 44^th president of the United States.

The thoughts are many from surprise to fear, from emotional to elation.

I would sum it up as the realization that you have a real friend in the white house.

 The realization that you are not alone  anymore.

 The realization that Millions and millions of  people believe what you believe .

The realization that tomorrow really can come today.

The realization that we are different.

The realization that we are the same.

The realization that  people, not things, will be on the top of the country’s agenda.

The realization that it is ok to win.  

Obama has had his October surprise and the surprise is;

there is no surprise.

It is so ironic that the children of the sixties and the MTV generation will elect a black man as president.

Not just because he is black; but because he is perceived as presidential by most Americans.

We  know all the negatives and that’s OK.

We can’t really believe it; but that’s OK

We are excited and scared ;but that’s OK

We going to get change, and that’s OK

We are on the bottom, but that’s OK

We have finally won and that’s OK

WHAT WOULD JESUS THE LIBERAL DO?     4.4.2007

                                                                            © 2007, UrbisMedia

He’s the darling of America’s political conservatives and right-wing fundamentalist Christian evangelists.   George Bush idolizes him, so does Jerry Falwell.   General Boykin says He could kick Mohammad’s ass (It’s Boykin’s that needs some kickin’).   Millions of fundamentalist Christians ask him every day what he would do when they are confronted with tough choices (like whether to buy a new Ford or Dodge pick-up truck).   And who is this person (ooops, Son of a God)?   Well, you already guessed that one.   But WHAT is thus guy (politically, I mean).   Well, he’s a liberal !   That’s right, as in “bleeding heart, commie, pinko, homophiliac, tax and spend,” LIBERAL!   That’s what!   How could these metaphysical Neanderthals worship someone who:

Hung out with working class people

Challenged the conservative religious establishment

Cared about sick people

Cared about children

Said being rich wasn’t a good thing

Was for peace and forgiveness, not war

Seemed to prefer hanging out with guys [1]

Never asked Mary Magdaline to get a boob job

Didn’t play golf

Did not own a pick up truck (even though he was a carpenter)

And, oh, he was a Jew

When the fundamentalist-evangelical Christian Right swept out of the American South on the backlash of Brown vs The Board of Education in 1954 the Voting Rights Act of 1964, among other progressive social movements (especially involving women’s rights), there were few who predicted that it would make such political inroads as to bring about the likes of an idiot like George Bush, their own “annointed one.”   One wonders whether how much it owed to the almost world-wide resurgence of religious fundamentalism.   There was the election of the Polish Pope (or Polish Joke) who hated communism, but sought to lead the Church back to a time before Marx and Engels, and the rise of the Shia and the Wahabbists and then the Taliban in Islam run by the like of Khomeni and bin Laden. [2]   In any case, although they were part of the same primitive use of religion to control rather than liberate minds, Catholic and Islamic fundamentalism only confirmed to the American Evangelical Protestant Right the need for strong Christian crusaders in political office to stave off any rise in religious relativism by those wishy-washy liberals.

The American Religious-Right(eous) captured the moral high-ground of American politics so quickly that the Liberals were rolling down the other side of the hill before they knew what hit them.   Liberal Protestant Christians would not be tolerated, as Jimmy Carter learned.   Anyway, it seemed he couldn’t beat the Muslims, so they preferred the phony religiosity of Ronald Reagan, who learned that it is easier to buy Muslims than to beat them.  

But maybe the greatest triumph of the R-R was a public relations triumph:   they took a liberal Jewish rabbi from the First Century and turned him into an icon for the very things he did or would have opposed.   No wonder they regarded Liberals as wish-washy; that’s exactly what they were, being terrified that any re-appropriation of Jesus would mark them as being non-secular.   Liberal Catholics thought they were really being cool because John XXIII let them sing Beatles tunes at mass. [3]

Liberals were blamed for the loss of the Vietnam war, a war that, like Bush’s Iraq war, was lost before we even started.   Liberals were blamed for drug abuse, crime, teen-age pregnancy, inflation, recession, divorce rates, abortion, pimples, hemorrhoids, and, oh, lest we ever forget, Communism and TAXES! [4]   Jesus, of course, had nothing to say on any of these subjects, but is routinely presented as if it was not the devil that tempted and tormented Jesus during his forty days in the desert, but those dastardly Liberals.   Conversely, religious Right-wingers maintain a strategic silence on what Jesus is on record as having a position.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. [Matthew 5:9]  

Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. [Matthew 5:39]  

I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despite-fully use you, and persecute you; [Matthew 5:44]  Talk about a wishy-washy appeaser.   This guy was a Liberal!

If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone at her. [John 8:7]  Do not judge, lest you too be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. [Matthew 7:1 & 2.]   Wow, way too tolerant!

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy [Matthew 5:7]  But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.  [Matthew 6:15]

Truly, I say unto you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 19:23] You cannot serve both God and Money. [Matthew 6:24.]   Oh, no, you mean he wouldn’t approve of Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy!

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.  [Matthew 22:21]   What, he wasn’t for prayer in schools and the Ten Commandments in every public building?

Love your neighbor as yourself. .[Matthew 22:39]  So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you. [Matthew 7:12.]   Guess he hasn’t been to Guantanamo.

If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. [Matthew 19:21]   What? You mean my SUV,   too?

But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. [Luke 14:13 &14.]    There he goes again, taxing us and spending it on those useless social programs.

And when thou pray, thou shall not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. . . . But thou, when thou pray, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret. [Matthew 6:6 & 7]   Oh, great, after we went and built him a nice big mega-church with state of the art broadcast equipment.

In short, if we are to have any faith in Jesus or his salvation it would be for the opposite reasons the people who claim him use his name.   Any Jesus worth my admiration wouldn’t be seen really dead hanging out with a bunch of zealous zombies who have perverted every Christian principle to suit their hatred, bigotry, greed, and bellicosity.   Jesus the liberal wouldn’t shown up in one of their mega-church malls if they were raffling off enough NASCAR tickets to bring all the Apostles and Mary Mag along.

_________________________________________________________

© 2007, James A. Clapp

[1] Maybe some of the guys were, you know, “that way,” but I happen to think Jesus was straight and, in fact, was in a monogamous relationship with Mary Mag (you know, she of the “Holy Grail” that became the subject of that pile of trip called The Da Vinci Code )

[2] No, I haven’t forgotten Meyer Kahane and right-wing Zionist groups.

[3] Meanwhile, the Pope was blessing Right wing death squads for killing “Marxist” nuns and priests in Central and South America.

[4] About the only ones that Jesus came close to having anything to say about were communism (he sounded a lot like a commie at times) and his apostle, Matthew, was a Roman tax collector.