Gee, Warren Buffett Must be Glad for that Goldman Sachs Bailout

So? "Who would you rather have breathing down your neck at a shareholder meeting, the government or Warren Buffett?"

Well the answer to that question is fairly simple. Unless we're talking about Tim Geithner, in which case I would much rather hang out with Warren Buffett any day.

Bloomberg on Buffett's big GS score:

Warren Buffett’s option to buy shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., part of an agreement reached at the depths of the credit crisis, has earned a profit on paper of more than $2 billion, a return of about 44 percent.

Goldman Sachs today passed $162 in New York trading for the first time since rival Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed in September. Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. holds warrants to buy $5 billion of Goldman common stock for $115 a share any time in the next four years.

“It must feel good to be Warren Buffett,” said Gerald Martin, a finance professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, who has studied the billionaire’s investing history. “That number just flies in the face of people who like to say he’s lost a step.”

“It makes sense, in a way,” said Martin of the Goldman Sachs decision to repay the U.S. funds first. “Who would you rather have breathing down your neck at a shareholder meeting, the government or Warren Buffett? An investment from Buffett reflects well on your company, and taking that government money was always a negative.”

I'd make some snarky, entirely unfounded quip about Buffett knowing something we don't and cleaning up on GS as a result but it turns out he made the same move with General Electric and lost out - big time. Poor old bastard.

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