My new podcast episode is out

Jason Del Ray — Amazon is creating a health care company with the help of Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase are working with the e-commerce giant.

Game-changer?

Recode

Amazon is creating a health care company with the help of Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase
Jason Del Ray

ht Brad DeLong at Grasping Reality

See also

The e-commerce giant is muscling its way into a number of businesses that banks have long dominated.

American Banker
How Amazon is shaking up financial services

Keven Wack

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teleSur — Warren Buffet: The Poor Are Not Poor Because the Rich are Rich

In an article published in The Wall Street Journal Thursday, the third wealthiest man in the world affirmed that the poor should stop blaming the rich for income inequality. Multimillionaire and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffet stated that, “The poor are most definitely not poor because the rich are rich. Nor are the rich undeserving.” In his opinion, successful businessmen like Henry Ford and Steve Jobs have improved the quality of life of the world’s population, and keep doing so. 

According to Buffet, such inequalities are “an inevitable consequence of an advanced market-based economy ... because [most] jobs [in the past] could also be carried out by almost any willing worker.” Now that most of the tasks have been mechanized, only a few workers manage to take advantage of their skills and benefit from a substantial income. For this reason, improving education or raising the minimum wage cannot be a viable solution, he argued.

There is no solution under capitalism according to Buffett. It's just “an inevitable consequence of an advanced market-based economy...."

I guess his solution is — get used to it.

teleSur
Warren Buffet: The Poor Are Not Poor Because the Rich are Rich

Warren Buffett's got the minimum wage thing wrong like so many other people

Warren Buffet was chiming in on the minimum wage or should I say, the idea of hiking the minimum wage. This was in response to a question as to whether or not that would be an effective means of fighting income inequality, which he says is "extraordinary" as in, really, really, bad.

Here's what Buffet said:

“I don’t have anything against raising the minimum wage but I don’t think you can do it in a significant enough way without creating a lot of distortions,” Buffett, 84, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s chief executive officer, said Saturday at the company’s annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. Those distortions “would cost a whole lot of jobs,” Buffett said.

It's funny. Buffett talks about distortions? Like massive, unprecedented income and wealth inequality is not a distortion? Come on.

Anyway, I'm assuming that when Buffett claims "a whole lot of jobs" would be lost he is inferring that higher wages paid by firms would lead to lower profits and then workers would have to be laid off.

This is fallacy of composition and it's the common error that most minimum wage hike detractors like to invoke.

The problem with that arguement is it simply doesn't hold up in the macro sense. First of all profit is composed of two variables. One is cost (C) and the other is revenues (R).

If wages are hiked then yes, costs (C) will increase, but at the same time people's incomes will rise (all else being equal) and that will translate into higher sales (revenues). Buffett of all people should know this. Revenues are not a constant; they're a VARIABLE. Why is it that all the minimum wage hike detractors can't understand this and focus on costs alone? There isn't an economist in the world who will tell you that higher income will necessarily lead to static or falling sales.

So, in the "macro" environment higher costs (wages) would be offset by higher sales and that would equate to the same or greater profits, which means that no one has to be laid off.

Maybe it's true in the micro sense, that is, if ONE FIRM  is forced to raise its minimum wage then that firm might struggle and be forced to lay people off. However, if it's an across the board hike and everybody's income goes up, sales will not collapse. On the contrary, they would  probably soar and so would profits.

WTF, Buffett??

Warren Buffett: Jamie Dimon Is Best Person For Treasury Secretary

'Nuff said.

The Huffington Post
Warren Buffett: Jamie Dimon Is Best Person For Treasury Secretary
Mark Gongloff

We WON!!! MMT got everything right...EVERYTHING!!!

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) scored a knockout this year, correctly predicting all the major economic events and their outcomes.

From the downgrade of the US credit rating and the resulting interest rate decline, to the lack of hyperinflation from QE, to the increase in deficits in Eurozone countries imposing austerity, MMT had it all right...EVERYTHING.

The other guys have egg all over their face and continue to look like ignorant fools.

Buffett Quotes

"Through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won," Buffett told Business Wire CEO Cathy Baron Tamraz at a luncheon in honor of the company's 50th anniversary. "It's been a rout."

"Don't ever give up the right to issue your own currency," Buffett said, referring to the institution of the standardized euro currency.

Warren Buffett: 'My Class Has Won' And 'It's Been A Rout'
Harry Bradford in The Huffington Post

Bill Gross joins Warren Buffett on the 99%

Pimco boss Bill Gross – one of the 1% – tweeted today:

"Class warfare by the 99%? Of course, they’re fighting back after 30 years of being shot at."

***

Gross joins Warren Buffet, who pointed out in 2006:

"There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war"

Read the whole post at Washington's Blog.

UPDATE: Citi's Vikram Pandit agrees: Vikram Pandit, Citigroup CEO: Occupy Wall Street's Sentiments Are 'Completely Understandable'