Kerry Paid off ?

[MMDad]

Originally Posted by PsyOps

I mean isn't this potentially the same kind of insider dealings as the Chaney/Halliburton thing?

Which was a big stink about nothing. It was a talking point, nothing more. Just like this is nothing but a distraction.

[Tilted (Premo)]

Originally Posted by PsyOps

Are you saying that John Kerry wont benefit one bit from this deal? According to this NYT article Kerry aims to earn hundreds of thousands from the deal:

As MMDad pointed out, obviously I wasn't saying that; quite to the contrary, I suggested that he (and Teresa) likely will to some extent.

Originally Posted by PsyOps

I don’t know anything about the law in these matters, but being Kerry still holds a very high and powerful government office, and Buffett is a big liberal/democrat contributor, and even contributed to Kerry presidential bid in ’04, wouldn’t this be a conflict of interest and violate ethics of the senate?

Unfortunately, I believe that it is still legal for members of Congress to (knowingly) own equity positions. Mr. Kerry's Heinz position (i.e. that of his wife) was disclosed as it was supposed to be. I think I read that, when it came to Mr. Kerry becoming Secretary of State, Mrs. Kerry holding the shares she still owned (through various trusts) was approved by whatever ethics entity does such things. I can't tell you anything more on that particular point (or even confirm that it's true).

I've long thought that one of the prices of accepting the power that comes with certain government positions (to include cabinet positions or being a member of Congress or on the Supreme Court) should be giving up control of various financial assets that could potentially be affected by the power you've been granted. I think they should all have to liquidate equity assets and place those funds in a blind trust or in some kind of prescribed holding vessel for as long as they hold office. If they didn't want to accept that condition, they wouldn't have to seek or take the position.

Anyway, no, I doubt there's a violation here. Berkshire Hathaway did what it does - found something it valued and made a deal (along with 3G) to acquire it at a price it thought made good financial sense. Other companies and private equity vessels make such acquisitions from time to time (and, btw, merger and acquisition activity has been quite brisk this year). The people that happen to own positions in the acquired equities typically benefit by being paid a premium to the current trading price. As it is, members of Congress and other government officials can still own equities and thus, sometimes, benefit from such deals - just as they benefit from stock prices moving up for other reasons. I suspect if you check the financial disclosure forms of other government officials, you'll find instances of them benefiting from acquisition deals - I wouldn't even be surprised if some of them owned positions in HNZ themselves.

[Tilted (Premo)]

Originally Posted by GURPS

500,000

500,000,000



the conspiracy question was, is this a pay off

Buffet - Donates to Dems

Kerry - Dem part of a Dem Administration


tell me if this was Ryan and the Koch Bros. making a deal like this

If the suggestion is that this deal was done specifically to benefit Mr. Kerry and his wife, I think that's a ridiculous notion. The idea that Mr. Buffett put up $12 billion, and talked 3G into putting up another $4 billion, and in addition assumed a considerable amount of debt, to funnel a half million or so dollars to the Kerry family - that doesn't pass the laugh test. This is what Mr. Buffett does, or at least one of the things he does. He's one of the few people in the world that can put up that kind of money and pull in the right players to make a deal of this size work. When he makes deals he takes care of himself (i.e. Berkshire Hathaway) - he typically makes out pretty well (ask Goldman Sachs or Bank of America, though those were different kinds of deals). He's always looking for these 'whales' as he calls them, and he keeps enough cash laying around so that he can take advantage when he finds one that he likes.

This was a deal between Berkshire Hathaway / 3G and Heinz. It wasn't a deal between Warren Buffett and John Kerry. The only thing that John Kerry has to do with it is that his wife still owns some stock in Heinz - less than two one-hundredths of a percent of the company apparently. They don't have anything to do with running the company and I'd bet my Apple position that the first the Kerry's heard about this deal was when it was announced publicly yesterday - when most other Heinz stockholders heard about it. (The SEC is apparently looking into some suspicious options activity from Wednesday, ahead of the announcement; there may have been some inside info leaked and acted upon, but that's a different matter - I think there's basically zero chance the Kerry's were involved with that).

[PsyOps (Premo)]

Originally Posted by MMDad

Which was a big stink about nothing. It was a talking point, nothing more. Just like this is nothing but a distraction.

Tell that to all the liberals who blew a cork over Cheney/Halliburton.

[PsyOps (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Tilted

I've long thought that one of the prices of accepting the power that comes with certain government positions (to include cabinet positions or being a member of Congress or on the Supreme Court) should be giving up control of various financial assets that could potentially be affected by the power you've been granted. I think they should all have to liquidate equity assets and place those funds in a blind trust or in some kind of prescribed holding vessel for as long as they hold office. If they didn't want to accept that condition, they wouldn't have to seek or take the position.

Anyway, no, I doubt there's a violation here. Berkshire Hathaway did what it does - found something it valued and made a deal (along with 3G) to acquire it at a price it thought made good financial sense. Other companies and private equity vessels make such acquisitions from time to time (and, btw, merger and acquisition activity has been quite brisk this year). The people that happen to own positions in the acquired equities typically benefit by being paid a premium to the current trading price. As it is, members of Congress and other government officials can still own equities and thus, sometimes, benefit from such deals - just as they benefit from stock prices moving up for other reasons. I suspect if you check the financial disclosure forms of other government officials, you'll find instances of them benefiting from acquisition deals - I wouldn't even be surprised if some of them owned positions in HNZ themselves.

I’m not begrudging BH for buying Heinz; except that there is a small thought in the back of my mind of some “you scratch my back…” Is it any coincidence that this happens right after Kerry leaves the senate and takes a higher post in the administration? (that just a question).

But I think it’s a shame that we trust our elected leaders so little that we demand they do what you suggest, hold no investment positions that could cause them to abuse their power for personal gain; something I am completely aware that has been going on forever.

[GURPS (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Tilted

If the suggestion is that this deal was done specifically to benefit Mr. Kerry and his wife, I think that's a ridiculous notion.

(The SEC is apparently looking into some suspicious options activity from Wednesday, ahead of the announcement; there may have been some inside info leaked and acted upon, but that's a different matter - I think there's basically zero chance the Kerry's were involved with that).

I know ......

just that the left plays this game all the time, drawing the Koch Bros. into the wildest accusations ...


like they are devil spawn

[Tilted (Premo)]

Originally Posted by PsyOps

I’m not begrudging BH for buying Heinz; except that there is a small thought in the back of my mind of some “you scratch my back…” Is it any coincidence that this happens right after Kerry leaves the senate and takes a higher post in the administration? (that just a question).

But I think it’s a shame that we trust our elected leaders so little that we demand they do what you suggest, hold no investment positions that could cause them to abuse their power for personal gain; something I am completely aware that has been going on forever.

I think the timing is almost surely coincidental. This goes back to something I was talking about in another thread (though there it was in the abstract): So many things happen in the world and in people's lives, and there are so many details related to those things, that there are almost always details that could be noted as 'lining up' in some way, shape or form. The real power of the human mind is pattern recognition, that's what separates it from other decision making / computational machines - that's why it's a natural learner. More so than anything perhaps, it enjoys recognizing patterns and making connections - often between wholly unrelated things. The ability to harness it to productive ends resolves, in large part, to the ability to filter out as gibberish many of the connections it's wired to make.

If Mr. Buffett wanted to scratch certain people's backs, there would surely be much easier (and less costly) ways to do so. Besides, this deal has very likely been in the works for months. It's not the kind of thing that gets decided on and put together overnight (unless circumstances dictate that it must be, e.g. if the acquired company had major liquidity problems).

[MMDad]

Originally Posted by PsyOps

Tell that to all the liberals who blew a cork over Cheney/Halliburton.

If your goal is to emulate them, feel free. That was nothing, this is nothing, and I choose to treat both as nothing.

[PsyOps (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Tilted

If Mr. Buffett wanted to scratch certain people's backs, there would surely be much easier (and less costly) ways to do so. Besides, this deal has very likely been in the works for months. It's not the kind of thing that gets decided on and put together overnight (unless circumstances dictate that it must be, e.g. if the acquired company had major liquidity problems).

But what better way to make things appear to have no appearance of impropriety than to have no appearance of impropriety; make it look so impossible. We’re talking about people that have so much money that these sorts of trades mean nothing in their grand scheme of money. As it’s said… chump changes. I don’t have any doubt the time it took to make such a deal; but anytime someone in a position of real power is making such trades with people that have monetarily supported that person, it raises eyebrows. Perhaps we’ll see down the road what transpires, if anyone even remembers this deal.