Warren Buffett appears as Walter White from “Breaking Bad” on his Christmas card

[n2doc]

Warren Buffett apparently likes the AMC television series Breaking Bad so much, he decided to send out a Christmas card inspired by the show. The card reads “Have yourself a Meth-y Little Christmas,” a play on the main character Walter White’s illicit job as a meth cook. It features a photo of Buffett in a full Walter White outfit, as seen above in the version sent to Wall Street Journal reporter Serena Ng, who used to cover Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway for the paper.
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http://qz.com/157633/warren-buffett-appears-as-walter-white-from-breaking-bad-on-his-christmas-card/

[Whisp]

1. ick

Mr. White was one of the biggest loser scums I've seen on a tv series.

Is he being lauded as a hero of some sort?

this is silly.

Absolutely great series tho.

[1000words]

9. Literature is rife with deeply flawed protagonists

Many "superheroes" are simply vigilantes with a tortured dark side.

[delta17]

15. Jesse was the flawed protagonist.

Walter had nine people murdered because he didn't want to pay them, and poisoned a child as a strategic move. He was a cold hearted fuck. I loved the show though.

[1000words]

16. That's debatable

It's not like he killed a room full of kindergartners. Perhaps "antihero" is a better term for the character.

[delta17]

14. Wow, I agree with you 100%.

I loved the show, but Walt was a terrible person. Lots of people thought the finale was awesome, and that he redeemed himself. To me, the most powerful part of that episode was seeing Walter Jr. looking totally defeated. His son was a great kid who will never recover from finding out his dad was a monster.

I think the message of the show is that you can't be a part time criminal. It either turns you into a selfish prick (Walter), or eats you alive (Jesse).

[joshcryer]

24. I don't know anyone who felt he redeemed himself.

It was more that he tied up the loose ends he caused, which, leading up to that point, were up in the air the whole way. Many expected it to end in tragedy and were rooting for Jessie to be freed and somehow in those last 15 minutes it happened.

[joshcryer]

23. He's an anti-hero.

Much like Tony Soprano.

(Though I despised Tony Soprano and I liked the relationship between Walter and Jessie.)

[JeffHead]

2. Yeah Mr. Buffett, Yeah Finance!

[sammythecat]

28. made me laugh

Those were the good ol' days with Jesse and Mr. White.

[adirondacker]

3. I wonder what Buffet is cooking these days. :/

[El_Johns]

4. Hmmm.

I have a hard time believing this. Doesn't seem like Buffett's style to me. Specially the "methy Christmas".

[Archaic]

5. Any man that plays the ukulele and sings with the Fruit of the Loom guys

Can have a methy Christmas.

If you're ever in Lincoln or Omaha, you might notice they sell Cherry Coke in a lot of places that never have it anywhere else. It's because Warren might show up.

Fun guy, buys a new Cadillac every year or two, puts a novelty plate like "Thrifty" on it, and auctions it for charity.

And whenever Bill Gates is flying through the middle of the country, he'll land at the airport, go across the street to the diner and have a snack with Buffet.

There are a tremendous number of awful people in finance. He's one of the good guys.

[El_Johns]

6. I don't think he's a good guy. I also doubt that he'd send Christmas cards with references to

illegal drugs. I don't think that picture is him, either.

Just an opinion though. Nothing personal.

[Archaic]

7. I get where you're coming from. But it is him.

https://twitter.com/WarrenBuffett/status/384483424364294144/photo/1

[El_Johns]

8. Hmm. I should concede, but how come his twitter account only has 4 posts?

https://twitter.com/WarrenBuffett

And how come that "Oracle" post is from September?


Seems like a Yes-Men stunt.

Just my opinion.

[Archaic]

10. Probably because he's not a socialite and doesn't have a PR team to do it.

It looks like he did it twice the day he got an account, once for a subtle Hillary Clinton for President post, and then once for the show.

You're probably right that an intern put him up to it though. I doubt he thought about putting up that kind of hashtag and such.

[El_Johns]

11. Buffett doesn't have a PR team.....? He's writing his own tweets?

Hmmm.

[Archaic]

12. I'm comparing him to the brands that have PR depts that post constantly.

The fact that he only has four makes me think it is him. He has four more than I do.

[Drahthaardogs]

13. probably

You should see his house. It is no mansion. Warren is pretty simple folk who just happens to pick stocks well.

[El_Johns]

18. He has more than one home, and his original home has been added on to.

See, I think Warren has an excellent PR team because everyone "knows" about his little house & his old car, but fewer know about his vacation homes and his jet.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

20. Go read up on what his son is doing.

Working to help others in developing nations with better farming techniques.

I'd say the family's got decent credibility.

[El_Johns]

21. I already know what his son's doing. He's continuing the work begun by the Rockefeller Foundation,

consolidating & monopolizing global agriculture. Using the Foundation his father gifted him as the vehicle.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

22. Lol. Wait. I thought Cargill and ADM were doing that.

[El_Johns]

25. No contradiction there.

Mr. Buffett has served in a number of public positions. In 1989, he was elected to the Douglas County Board of Commissioners in Nebraska, he has served on two Office of the United States Trade Representative committees, and as Chairman of the Nebraska Ethanol Authority and Development Board.

Mr. Buffett served in senior executive positions at Archer Daniels Midland Company and The GSI Group.

Mr. Buffett currently serves on the Corporate Boards of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., an investment holding company, The Coca Cola Company, the world’s largest beverage company, Lindsay Corporation, a world-wide leader in the manufacturing of agricultural irrigation products, and Sloan Implement, a privately owned distributor of John Deere agricultural equipment.

Mr. Buffett has served on the boards of Archer Daniels Midland, a leading global food processor, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc., the largest Coca-Cola bottler in the world, ConAgra Foods, one of North America’s largest food service manufacturers and retail food suppliers and Agro Tech Foods, a publicly traded food manufacturing company in India. He serves or has served on numerous non-profit boards.

http://www.thehowardgbuffettfoundation.org/about-hgbf/about-howard-g-buffett/


Howard G. Buffett, the son of Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, says many of the proposed solutions to global hunger and food insecurity aren’t going to work. Buffett offered his prescription for how to succeed where others have failed in the fight against hunger during a recent talk at Cargill. Buffett was joined by his son, Howard W. Buffett, with whom he co-authored the new book “40 Chances.”

http://www.cargill.com/news/howard-buffett-heres-how-we-can-end-hunger-and-improve-food-security/index.jsp

Partners

ADM, The Howard G. Buffett Foundation, Monsanto, and Feeding America are the founding partners of Invest An Acre. Howard G. Buffett is the originator of the program concept. These partners each brought elemental assets to the program...

Cargill is an international producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and services....

http://www.investanacre.org/

[Pretzel_Warrior]

26. His Wikipedia entry presents him a bit less ominously

Than your cherry picked items about his biography.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Graham_Buffett

[El_Johns]

27. In the HuffPo piece, Buffet lays it out. The broad argument he makes is not objectionable.

He is defending a perfectly sensible program within the UN's World Food Program (WFP) called Purchase for Progress...US shipping interests have lashed out at Purchase for Progress on the grounds that it cuts them—as well as large US grain traders like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill—out of the (quite profitable) supply chain for food aid...

So here's Buffet's response to the shipping industry's demand for its cut of the aid action:

(Purchase for Progress) provides training, access to credit and market access for poor farmers. The objective is to use WFP's buying power as an interim step. It is expected that farmers will eventually forgo sales to WFP and in the future sell to companies who operate in their country like ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Maseca [the Mexican corn-flour giant part-owned by ADM], or Tiger brands. Once these farmers learn about contracts, quality requirements and delivery obligations while building a credit rating, they have found a permanent way out of poverty.

So according to Buffett, the goal of development policy for African farmers is to get them to scale up to the point where they can sell industrial commodity crops to the globe's big grain buyers. When they do, there will be another benefit for western transnationals:

One point that seems to be missing in this discussion is that as countries work their way out of poverty, increase their GDP and overall wealth, they become consumers of goods produced from countries such as the US. Their purchasing power increases and they import our products—creating US jobs and sustaining our industries…

Now, critics of industrial agriculture like me are often dismissed as pie-eyed idealists. But this is pie-eyed idealism. To get big enough to sell profitably to massive companies like ADM, farmers will have to scale up, buy annual doses of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and high-tech seeds (another boon to US companies that Buffett could have mentioned), and invest in massive machines. All of that requires taking on vast amounts of debt, which makes farm operations extremely vulnerable...

The more vexing question, of course, is what happens to the millions of farmers who would be forced off of the land in Buffett's vision of industrial agriculture for Africa. In the postwar United States, a manufacturing boom greeted former farmers and their offspring, giving them ample opportunity to join the middle class. As Nick Cullather shows in his recent book, The Hungry World—which I reviewed here—things went rather differently in Mexico and India when their farmers turned to industrial agriculture in the postwar years. Some of them gained manufacturing jobs, but millions were forced into chronic poverty in urban shantytowns.

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/08/howard-buffett-wrong-about-africa

[okaawhatever]

17. I doubt Buffet has a PR team. He does his own taxes and as of a few years ago got his Wall St data

on white ticker tape,just like fifty years ago. He also lives in the same house he bought in the 50's. He bought another house in California for a few million not that long ago. He has pledged to give 99% of his wealth to charity.

As to the tweet situation, I remember reading something about his posting his first tweet. He had an aversion to computers, even though he was good friends with Bill Gates. He was often questioned as to why he didn't buy computer stocks. He said it was because it was something he wasn't familiar with. He didn't own a computer until he found out he could play bridge with other people on it.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

19. I like him. He gives great talks to young people

About important habits to develop when they are young.

The guy may be a billionaire, but he's also loaded with integrity.

Love his sense of humor.

[seattledo]

29. He has more than he needs. That is not integrity.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

30. lol. you have a goofy definition of integrity

I bet even you have more than you need, technically.