Jon Najarian at Barron's (subscription-only) writes:
When listing the worst traders of all time, many of you would include some sports teams that made infamous deals. In football, the Atlanta Falcons traded Brett Favre to the Green Bay Packers. In baseball, you can debate whether the Chicago Cubs trading Lou Brock to the St. Louis Cardinals for Ernie Broglio was worse than the Philadelphia Phillies trading Ryne Sandberg and ...
"The federal government let the trade of the century slip through its fingers at the depths of the financial crisis. Worse, Warren Buffett had already drawn up the perfect blueprint, in steps so easy even a Treasury secretary could follow. Doesn’t that make the government a candidate for worst trader of all time?
Long before his acquisition of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (ticker: BNI) railroad, the Oracle of Omaha agreed, on Sept. 23, 2008, to invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs (GS) through a purchase of perpetual preferred stock. The shrewd chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway also got warrants to buy up to $5 billion of Goldman common shares at $115 each, some 8% below where the stock was trading at the time.
In a single bold stroke, when Goldman and the global markets needed it most, Buffett put his money and reputation on the line. He stood to own roughly 10% of the bank, and his convertible shares also pay a fat 10% dividend.
Yet even with this trade serving as a very public model, what did then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson ask for? When the Wall Street giants had their backs to the wall, he gave them billions of our taxpayer dollars for a relative pittance ...
Worst trader? Sure, if you assume Paulson came up with those terms out of ignorance or negligence instead of self-interested malevolence. Nobody likes to lose his assigned trough at the oligarchy's country club.
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[h/t to Barry Ritholtz]