Saturday, July 14, 2012

Elitist Wall Street Battle: Bartiromo versus Spitzer (and launched by Warren Buffett)

Late Friday a fascinating on air battle took place between CNBC's Maria Bartiromo and the former New York governor and former NY attorney general Eliot Spitzer.

Spitzer brought a number of questionable charges against certain powerful Wall Street firms, when he was AG. The charges that were brought were extremely selective, given that the types of charges brought could have been brought against most Wall Street firms. It was always curious to me as to who Spitzer was really working for. His clear goal was to gain publicity as a Wall Street battler, to help in his eventual quest for the governorship, but the point in my mind was always who was egging him on.

Spitzer lets it slip in this interview. It was the Oligarch from Omaha, Warren Buffett, who caused Spitzer to go after AIG, a major competitor of Buffett's in the insurance business.

In the below clip, Bartiromo is clearly in the anti-Spitzer camp, which has justifiable complaints against the selective and at the edge accusations that Spitzer made. But the most fascinating part of this clip is to learn a bit about how Warren "Howdy Doody" Buffett really plays the game behind the scenes. Who knew he was calling up government enforcers to provoke investigations of his competitors?

3 comments:

  1. I'm no fan of Warren Buffett, but if I remember the case correctly, his General Re firm was engaged in some of these insurance deals with AIG. The terms of the deals were structured (this is according to the WSJ) so that the accounting for the transactions would classify them as insurance, but they did not actually transfer the risk. I think Buffett got involved once he learned about the transactions - as he owns many companies he is not engaged in day to day transactions. When he discovered it, he brought in the au tor i tays.

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  2. Yeah right, of all the agencies he could have reported this to, he went to Spitzer.

    This isn't the act of a Boy Scout, it is an act of someone who wants to knock out a competitor.

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  3. How does anyone take seriously a clown like Spitzer who was going to prostitutes while prosecuting people for doing the same thing? How does he even have a tv show?

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