In the western movies of old, you could tell the good guys from the bad. The good guys wore white hats. The bad wore black.
Here we are in the middle of perhaps the most important legislation of this year: financial regulation to keep us out of the catastrophe that almost took our financial system down, along with all of us, and Warren Buffett is backing a Senator from Nebraska who definitely wears a black hat.
Follow along with me, and we'll talk more about good guys and bad guys, and how their actions match their hats, or sometimes don't.
I read Warren Buffett's book, Snowball. A fine book that elaborated on the political and financial behavior and beliefs of the Buffett family. Warren's wife, Susie, now deceased, was a champion of the under-privileged. She spent much of her life and millions of dollars trying to help people less fortunate than she was. Warren Buffett was the same type--and as far as I can see, he continues to help people through the Gates Foundation.
And now I am informed, and therefore puzzled, to learn that he has thrown in with a man who has nothing good in mind for this country that I can see, the shameless Senator Nelson of Nebraska, a Democrat in sheep's clothing, a man so Republican and so self-interested, that he never saw a lobbyist contribution he didn't like. The hell with America and its people. Let Wall Street run Main Street because our Senate Republicans and Nelson are too cowardly to vote for strong reforms that take derivatives out of the shadow and allow us to have oversight over them.
Why should a man in a white hat fear financial reform that is good for the industry and good for the country? Why should deals in back rooms be favored over debate on the Senate floor that is out in the open so that people can see what the issues are? Even if we may not understand the full import of each word of the jargon, we still want to hear it, to know that our interests as a nation are being protected.
I think the sage from Omaha should put his white hat back on and come out from behind Senator Nelson's shadow. The President cited Warren Buffett's fine characterization of derivatives as "weapons of mass financial destruction." So why does Buffett not want them out in the light so that they can be regulated and the nation protected?
We do not want to become a second Greek crisis--referring not to its fine people but to its financial melt down of recent days. To be a strong, solvent nation we need rules of the road.
I'll be reading and hoping that in the days ahead Mr. Buffet will join the good guys and lend whatever voice he has to good, strong financial regulation that will protect this nation from a potential second Great Depression.
Besides, I think he would look good in a white hat. It suits his image.