Buffett Buys Dinner for Fund Manager Based on Letter

I love this story. Warren Buffett recently flew a 29 year-old fund manager to Omaha and paid for her meal because he liked the research she submitted to him so much. The linked story has all the details so I won't repeat. Dinners with Buffett have sold for over $2 million at charity auctions, so to be flown in by Buffett for a meal, all based on your letter to him, is amazing.

She put the picture with Buffett, whose wallet she's holding, as her Facebook profile pic:



The crazy part to me is learning about Cara Goldenberg, who is like a wunderkind 29 year-old managing partner of Permian Investment Partners, which she co-founded 18 months ago. She must be smart as hell to be in that position that young, and have some good ideas to submit as research to Buffett that would impress him so much.

PS, I found this story on the Everything Warren Buffett blog feed which I once linked to in our Content DJ post.

Energy Innovation: The Smart Grid

A major factor to consider with renewable energy is that they tend to be located in specific geographic regions in the US. As laid out in this BW article on improving the grid, solar has the strongest concentration in the southwestern deserts while wind has the strongest concentration in the northern plains. Of course, spending $3.4 billion of federal money on the grid in order to create an open playing field for all types of energy sources threatens the business model of existing suppliers.

BusinessWeek on China's Economy

In a long and interesting article, BusinessWeek covers the present and the future of China's economy. As I was reading it I kept thinking back to our World Is Flat discussion and its global implications.

Scientific American: Should Thursday Be the New Friday?

Over the summer Scientific American made its case for the work week consisting of four ten-hour days - or, from the perspective of employees, the weekly three-day weekend. I vote yes to this. Then again at my work I have ten hour days regularly anyway, so I think my company would lose more time than it would gain from 4-day initiative. How would this affect your work?

North Dakota: Very Small

About a month ago Business Week posted an article titled What's North Dakota Doing Right? After reading and considering the article, I have suggested an alternative headline in this blog title.

Turns out Bismarck only has 60,000 people and homes cost an average of $160,000. It's freaking freezing there and it's got 90% farmland, "making it the most rural state in the nation" according to BW. Well, then. May I suggest that if your entire state has fewer people than Fresno (650k) it is not so tough to manage your budget. The recession never affected ND and its 3.6% unemployment because the economy's boom hardly affected the state beforehand - its GDP of $29.4 billion is roughly equivalent to Turkmenistan.

And now to close with a scene from the West Wing:

Donna: Eliminating the term north from North Dakota is an important state issue and the President feels it should be resolved on a state level. While the President is sympathetic towards the cause and understands the large economics ramifications of this name change, he feels the issue is not yet ripe for national attention. The President wishes you well on your endeavors and thanks you for your support.

Man:Uh, Miss Moss? Are you aware that studies clearly show the word 'north' leaves the impression that this state is cold, snowy and flat, significantly depressing tourism and business startup.

Donna: With due respect, sir, your average temperature is 7 degrees. Your average snowfall: 42 inches, and a name change isn't going to take care of that.

Woman: We enjoy roughly the same climate as South Dakota. We took in 73.7 million in tourism revenue last year. They took in 1.2 billion. They have the word south.

Donna: Also Mount Rushmore.

America in Balance - Who Knew?

This lovely Economist video really shows how we were a country in balance...until the 80's.

Malcolm Gladwell on Bear Sterns

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a New Yorker article on the psychology of overconfidence that accompanies Wall Street CEO types, focusing specifically on Bear Sterns and its ousted CEO Jimmy Cayne.

CIT = Country In Transition?

CIT, controversially, didn't get additional TARP money this past week, and now seems to have found private financing. Do you think the government's gamble will pay off?

Goldman Sachs v. United States

Goldman Sachs is looking to buy back the warrants the US Government bought w/in TARP - call me cynical, but I fret the US will get the raw end of this deal.