[Marxism] The ruling class in the United States of America istheentire capitalist class!

[S. Artesian]

Speaking of the ruling class and its heroes, nobody gets accorded more hero 
status , now that Greenspan has been shown, for the third time, to be 
nothing more than an hack ideologue, than Warren Buffett.

The Wall Street Journal weekend edition, Nov 1-2, has an interesting article 
called:

"The Other Reason for Warren Buffett's Success"
--Yes, There Is His Stock-Picking Prowess, But Exclusive Deals Add to 
Berkshire' Fortunes--

Among some of the interesting facts about the common man's billionaire 
portfolio is-- that it no longer consists, in the main, of publicly trade 
securities.

"As recently as 1995, 73.5% of Berkshire's total assets consisted of a 
portfolio of publicly traded stocks.... As of June 30 [2008] though, 
Berkshire's stockholdings made up just 25% of its assets.

He has been buying private firms outright and landing 'sweetheart' deals in 
public companies.

Since the beginning of 2006, Berkshire has spent nearly $17 billion buying 
private companies lock, stock, and barrel..

Meanwhile on the sweetheart front, in 2008 alone, Mr. Buffett has sunk $5 
billion into Goldman Sachs Group, $3 billion into GE, $3 billion into Dow 
Chemical, and $6.5 billion into the merger of Mars Inc. with Wm. Wrigley Jr. 
Co-- all with preferential terms....

In his latest round of sweetheart deals, he gets a generous upside and 
virtually eliminates any downside, a 'heads I win, tails I win' structure 
that other investors can only dream about.

...Mr. Buffett tries to secure a margine of safety.  That term...means that 
the price is so far below the business's underlying value that severe loss 
is improbable."

Like I said, securities are not long term investments, but only  trading 
vehicles, unless of course you are selling the securities, then flogging the 
"long term" is a time-proven method of separating fools from their money.