Thanks for the OpenSecrets link, KLP.
This is actually old news but new news for me, since I just read it for the 1st time. Looks as though I am in good company when it comes to major disappointment with the American business community:
May 05, 2003
US sage attacks executive greed
From Abigail Rayner in Omaha, Nebraska
WARREN BUFFETT, the US investor whose folksy style masks one of the shrewdest minds
in corporate America, used the annual gathering of his Berkshire Hathaway vehicle to launch
a fierce attack on US executive greed and President Bush’s planned tax cuts.
The second richest man in the world, Mr Buffett, known as the “Sage of Omaha”, criticised
plans for tax cuts that he said were designed to fleece the poor and reward the rich.
“I am not for the Bush plan. It screams of injustice. The main beneficiaries will be people like
me and Charlie,” he said, referring to the Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman Charlie
Munger. Mr Buffett said the tax plan was equivalent to “us giving a lesser percentage of our
incomes to Washington than the people working in our shoe factories”.
He called on investors to rise up and revolt over colossal executive pay packages, saying in
the past 20 years there had been “an enormous disparity in the rates of compensation
between people at the top and people at the bottom, and a disconnect between people at the
top and the shareowners who give them the money”. |
