The `Buffettgate' Scandal and U.S. Left Movement: Part 5

Upper West Side NY

16 January, 2022

7:45 PM

Description

During the 1959 to 1962 period when the son of former right-wing GOP Rep. Howard Homan Buffett and father of the co-president of the NoVo Foundation that funds many U.S. left "movement" NGOs with "charitable grants"—Warren Buffett—was using the money of his 11 private partnerships/"hedge funds" to speculate on the stock market, Warren Buffett was also named chairman of the Data Documents manufacturing firm in Omaha by his B-C Ltd. business partner: John Cleary--the former secretary of Congressman Howard Buffett. And in 1961, Warren Buffett used $1 million [equal to over $9.3 million in 2022] of his partnerships' stock speculation money to purchase 70 percent of the Dempster Mill Manufacturing stock, appointed himself its chairman of the board and then put the company up for sale in August 1962. Before the then-31-year-old Warren Buffett purchased control of Dempster Mill Manufacturing, the firm made windmills and water irrigation systems in Beatrice, Nebraska. But after appointing himself board chairman, the NoVo Foundation co-president's father closed 5 branches of the company; and laid-off 100 Dempster Mill Manufacturing factory workers in the early 1960s. According to Roger Lowenstein's Buffett book, in the early 1960s the NoVo Foundation co-president's father "was squeezing cash from" the Dempster Mill Manufacturing factories and "funneling" this cash "into stocks and bonds" while telling his early 1960s business partners: "`We have converted…assets from the manufacturing business…to…securities.'" So after a year of Wall Street Speculator Warren Buffett owning Dempster Mill, his Dempster Mill firm now had $2 million [equal to over $18 million in 2022] worth of stocks and bonds, prior to Buffett's Buffett Partnership Limited [BPL] making a $2.3 million [equal to over $20.9 million in 2022] profit--by finalizing the sale of Dempster Mill in 1963. The Buffett book also recalled that, by the early 1960s, Warren Buffett was "raising serious money in New York" by "feeding off" the "network" of his former Columbia University business school professor and Graham-Newman Corporation employer, Ben Graham. As the same book also noted:"…He met Marshall Weinberg, a broker and fellow alumnus, at a lecture…Weinberg and his brother invested $100,000 [equal to over $900,000 in 2022]. Henry Brandt, another broker…invested and steered his clients to Buffett…" By the time Warren Buffett dissolved his 11 private partnerships into BPL in January 1962, he was speculating on the Wall Street stock market with over $7 million [equal to over $64.6 million in 2022] in capital, pooled from 99 partnership/"hedge fund" business partners and himself; and of the $7 million in partnership capital he was using to speculate, $1 million [equal to over $9.2 million in 2022], represented Buffett's portion of this pooled stock market speculation capital. Coincidentally, by the early 1960s one of the investors in the Brooklyn and Kingston, NY-based NoVo Foundation co-president's father's stock market speculation partnerships was the father-in-law of 21st-century State University of New York Board of Trustees Chair and Barnard College Trustee Merryl H. Tisch: then-Loews Corp. board chair and later 1980s CBS mass media conglomerate board chairman Laurence Tisch. As this writer recalled in part 5 of a May 28, 2021 Upper West Side Patch article, titled "Who Profits From Upper West Side's Barnard College?", Laurence Tisch and his brother had become wealthy during the 1950s McCarthy Era, after utilizing the $125,000 [equal to around $1.7 million in 2021] that their father, a garment manufacturer, gave them in 1946 to purchase two hotels; and an anti-trust lawsuit court settlement forcing MGM to sell off its Loews movie theater chain enabled Tisch and his brother to gain control of Loews Corp. in 1960, by purchasing 43 percent of its stock. And soon afterwards, apparently, the now-deceased former CBS and Loews Corp. Chair Tisch also began financially backing NoVo Foundation Co-President Peter Buffett's father's early 1960s stock market speculation activity, by investing $100,000 [[equal to over $900,000 in 2022] in one of Warren Buffett's private partnerships, according to Roger Lowenstein's Buffett book. (end of part 5)