The `Buffettgate' Scandal and U.S. Left `Movement':Part 3

Upper West Side NY

27 December, 2021

1:28 PM

Description

Before starting to work for the NoVo Foundation's co-president's grandfather—right-wing GOP Rep. Howard Homan Buffett—at his own father's Buffett-Falk stock market speculation firm in Omaha, Nebraska between 1951 and 1954, NoVo Foundation Co-President Peter Buffett's father—Billionaire Warren Buffett—attended, coincidentally, Columbia University's Graduate School of Business on the Upper West Side, during the 1950-1951 academic year. A junior partner in the Graham-Newman Corporation stock market speculation firm of then-Columbia University business school lecturer Ben Graham—David Dodd—was, also coincidentally, the associate dean in charge of admissions at Columbia's Graduate School of Business in 1950. And, "after the deadline, and without an interview," according to former Morgan Stanley Managing Director Alice Schroeder's 2008 book The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, the son of former Congressman Buffett, Warren Buffett, was allowed to enroll as a student at Columbia's school of business. Columbia Graduate School of Business lecturer Ben Graham had been born in 1894 in London, a year before his family moved to New York City; and, until 1917, his actual original last name was "Grossbaum," not "Graham." Before changing his last name, a Columbia University dean named Keppel had recommended Grossbaum/Graham for a job at the Neuberger, Henderson & Loeb stock market speculation firm in 1914; and, for most of the years between 1914 and 1923, Graham worked there (eventually becoming a partner) until he was provided, individually, with $250,000 [equal to over $3.8 million in 2021] by the then-super-rich Rosenwald family, as capital to start a separate business firm, which he closed in 1925. But in 1925, the former Columbia student and later business school lecturer established the "Benjamin Graham Joint Account;" and in 1936 Graham and Jerome Newman (an investor and partner in Graham's Joint Account firm and brother of one of Graham's clients), re-organized their firm for tax evasion reasons, into two businesses: a "hedge fund" or private partnership called "Newman & Graham" and a Wall Street stock market speculation firm called the Graham-Newman Corporation. In addition, for a time, the largest owner, after the Rockefeller Foundation, of the Northern Pipeline oil transmission company was Graham's firm; and the former Columbia business school lecturer was a member of the Northern Pipeline corporate board. Despite violating Section 12(d)(2) of the Investment Company Act of 1940, which prohibited a firm like Graham-Newman from acquiring more than 10 percent of the total outstanding voting stock of an insurance company, when Warren Buffett began attending Graham's class at Columbia in the early 1950s McCarthy Era, Graham's Graham-Newman Corporation was still being allowed to own 55 percent of the Government Employees Insurance company [GEICO], which it had purchased in 1948, after Graham saw GEICO "was a gold mine," according to Roger Lowenstein's book Buffett. And Graham, himself, was still allowed to be GEICO's chairman of the board while also teaching at Columbia University. According to The Snowball book, when Warren Buffett developed his personal connection to GEICO board chairman Graham, as a Columbia student, Graham's wife would drive Graham "up to Columbia from the Graham-Newman Corporation office at 55 Wall Street every Thursday afternoon after the market closed to teach his `seminar on common stock valuation.'" While attending Graham's class at Columbia, NoVo Foundation Co-President Buffett's father apparently used money contributed by Rep. Howard Homan Buffett in January 1951 to speculate in the shares of the stock of the Tri-Continental Corporation (whose General Shareholdings subsidiary had owned a holding company that, in turn, owned many U.S. public utility firms prior to the mid-1940s--before General Shareholdings was later merged into Tri-Continental). And when, despite Warren Buffett offering to work at his Columbia professor's stock market speculation firm for no pay, Graham refused to hire Warren Buffett later in 1951, the NoVo Foundation co-president's father moved back to Omaha, Nebraska to work as a stockbroker in Rep. Buffett's stock market speculation firm, Buffett-Falk. In addition, during that same year, Rep. Buffett apparently co-signed a loan for $5,000 or so from the Omaha National Bank, when Warren Buffet was running short of money to engage in stock market speculation. Not surprisingly, among the stocks Warren Buffett purchased while working for Rep. Buffett's Buffett-Falk firm were stocks of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal & Iron Company that the Graham-Newman firm owned and controlled. In addition, while at Buffett-Falk, Warren Buffett speculated in the stock of Cleveland Worsted Mills, whose assets of marketable securities were later redistributed to its shareholders in January 1956—after its corporate management liquidated the company rather then negotiate with the union of its striking textile workers in Cleveland. According to The Snowball, the Buffett-Falk firm of the NoVo Foundation co-president's grandfather and father "made a profit" during the 1950s "by selling a stock to clients at a…higher price than it paid, and buying stock from clients at a lower price than it sold the stock for;" and "the spread was invisible to the customers." And at Buffett-Falk, Warren Buffett also apparently pushed on his customers, all over Omaha, the GEICO stock of the company that Graham, his former Columbia business school professor, was then the board chairman of. When Rep. Buffett's last term in Congress ended in early 1953, Warren Buffett then set up the Buffett & Buffett stock market speculation partnership in Omaha (in which former Rep. Buffett contributed some capital); before Graham then decided to hire Warren Buffett to work in New York City at Graham-Newman in August 1954, for $12,000 per year [equal to around $116,000 per year in 2021 U.S. dollars]. And, despite him having enlisted to serve as a member of the Nebraska National Guard during the Korean War, the Nebraska National Guard allowed former right-wing GOP Rep. Buffett's son, Warren Buffett, to move out-of-state to work at Graham's firm. And also, by the end of 1954, then Graham-Newman employee Warren Buffett had spent $35,000 [equal to around $338,000 in 2021 U.S. dollars] on purchasing stock of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal & Iron Company (that Graham-Newman controlled)--which also purchased the Union Underwear/Fruit of the Loom company around that time. By the time former Columbia Professor Graham shut down his Graham-Newman firm in August 1956, the then-26-year old Warren Buffett was personally worth $140,000 [equal to over $1,360,000 in 2021 U.S. dollars], as a result of his stock market speculation activity during the Korean War and McCarthy era of the 1950s. So, not surprisingly, when Warrant Buffett returned to Omaha, Nebraska in 1956, he began to set up private partnerships/"hedge funds" based on the Newman & Graham model, such as Buffett Associates; with investors or partners like then-Norwich University President Homer Dodge (sent to Buffett by Ben Graham) and Rep. Buffett's former secretary in Congress, John Cleary. And by 1957, former Rep. Buffett's son managed 3 partnerships and was using between $300,000 and $500,000 [equal to between around $2,830,000 and $4,718,000 in 2021 U.S. dollars] in capital to engage in stock speculation on Wall Street, in a generally secretive way. Coincidentally, despite having owned corporate stock in Billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway holding company in recent years, the NoVo Foundation of Warren Buffett's son—which funds many U.S. left "Movement" NGOs—doesn't indicate on its website all the corporations the Buffett family and Berkshire Hathaway have owned stock of in recent years. Yet, as The Nation magazine noted in a Feb. 13, 2018 article, titled "Special Investigation: The Dirty Secret Behind Warren Buffett's Billions," by David Dayen, "through Berkshire, [Warren] Buffett…invests in scores of public corporations" and "25 people work at Berkshire's headquarters, overseeing 63 companies and more than half a trillion dollars in assets." The Form 990 financial filing for 2019 of the NoVo Foundation also indicates that between Jan. 1, 2019 and Dec. 31, 2019 the foundation of Warren Buffett's son paid $1,143,871 to the "non-profit" Tides Foundation office in Room 402 at 55 Exchange Place in Manhattan to "provide administrative support"—at the same time the NoVo Foundation apparently authorized that over $100 million be given in current or future "charitable grants" to the Tides Foundation to, in turn, eventually pass on to various "non-profit" NGOs, in the form of over 300 current or future "charitable grants." In addition, between Jan. 1, 2019 and Dec. 31, 2019, the following total annual compensations were paid by the NoVo Foundation to NoVo Foundation executives:1. NoVo Foundation Executive Director Pamela Shifman was paid a total annual compensation of $1,532,267—which included the $977,233 that constituted "future payments payable over 2 years upon separation of service," according to the 2019 Form 990 financial filing;2. NoVo Foundation Senior Director Gary Schwartz was paid a total annual compensation of $411,157;3. NoVo Foundation Director Jody Myrum was paid a total annual compensation of $356,448;4. NoVo Foundation Director of Organization Matthew Tye was paid a total annual compensation of $323,431;5. NoVo Foundation Program Officer Sangeeta Budhiraja was paid a total annual compensation of $309,331; and6. NoVo Foundation Director of Communications Joseph Voeller was paid a total annual compensation of $275,415. And although the Poor People's Campaign "Movement" NGO claims to be fighting to end poverty and for economic equality, the Upper West Side's "non-profit" Union Theological Seminary accepted a $1 million grant in 2019 (according to the NoVo Foundation's 2019 Form 990 financial filing) purportedly to support a "Poor People's Campaign"- -from a foundation that, ironically, has benefitted financially from a Berkshire Hathaway firm that has made windfall profits from the increase in poverty and economic inequality within the USA since 1973. (end of part 3)